average gpa for IB vs MCB vs CS?

daynnight · September 5, 2010, 4:04pm

(10 characters)

anon23806243 · September 5, 2010, 6:23pm

I can give you the average departmental GPAs, but not the overall average GPA of individual students from those majors.

This covers most of the different biology departments
IB is 3.34
BioE is 3.51
EPS is 3.50
ESPM is 3.45
ES is 3.39
PMB is 3.28
Public Health is 3.62
NST is 3.37
MCB is 2.96

According to this thread (<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/uc-transfers/900945-average-gpa-graduating-students-major.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/uc-transfers/900945-average-gpa-graduating-students-major.html</a>) CS is somewhere between 3.0 and 3.1

You can’t directly compare between biology majors and CS because the lower division course situation is a bit different (CS LD requirements are mostly CS department courses, whereas all LD requirements are from different departments*).

*Technically Bio 1A/L is an MCB course and Bio 1B an IB one, but campusbuddy doesn’t count them for their appropriate departments because they are under the generic “Biology” header.

Rectifier · June 21, 2014, 7:01pm

As I will post elsewhere, this information is just not correct. MCB is depicted as being a GPA killer for pre-meds but in fact, MCB grads have higher average GPAs than grads in most other Bio majors at Berkeley. As a Cal professor I have access from the administration to average cumulative grade data for all majors as well as average major grades for some. Between 2010 and 2013, the average major GPAs at Berkeley for MCB majors was 3.25, and for IB majors it was 3.11.

In terms of cumulative GPAs here are some averages for the 2010-2013 period:
IB: 3.28
ESPM: 3.36
PMB: 3.15
Public Health: 3.44
NST: 3.34
MCB: 3.42

So please do not make any decisions based on faulty data! MCB majors do very well.

Rectifier · June 21, 2014, 7:28pm

I made a couple of minor transcription errors in the above post, including minor errors in the average GPA for ESPM, PMB, and Public Health. The differences are not substantive, but I apologize anyway. The corrected list is below:

IB: 3.28
ESPM: 3.39
PMB: 3.19
Public Health: 3.43
NST: 3.34
MCB: 3.42

Jweinst1 · June 21, 2014, 7:43pm

@Rectifier‌

I believe your data is incorrect, there is no way possible that MCB has a higher average gpa then IB. Most, if not all MCB classes are curved to a B-, which is a 2.7 on the GPA scale, while most IB classes are curved to a B+ which is a 3.3 on the GPA scale.

By the way would you mind stating how this data was calculated? Was it only students who electively submitted their grades?

Moshe1010 · June 22, 2014, 4:24am

@Jweinst1‌
His data makes sense. If you look over schedulebuilder.berkeley.edu you will see that most classes are curved with a B or B+, some of them even A- @ MCB.

Rectifier · June 22, 2014, 4:19pm

These data are correct. They are from official university sources. They are based on ALL grades in the classes not electively submitted grades. These are the facts. Furthermore, Moshe1010 points out correctly that Schedule Builder shows that the “common knowledge” that MCB courses are curved below a B average is just incorrect. Furthermore, it is important to point out that many students other than MCB majors take MCB classes so one cannot infer average GPAs of MCB majors from average grades in MCB classes.

However these rumors started, they are just, simply, incorrect.

Jweinst1 · June 25, 2014, 7:03am

@‌Rectifier

Lets take an accurate look at the grade distributions on schedule builder for the MCB Major shall we?

Now for upperdvision courses, the ones that assign an average grade of an A- or B+ are elective courses, in MCB you must take specific tracts of courses which only allow for a maximum of 1 or possibly 2 elective courses, while all MCB tracts require 6 or 7 upper division classes. Ill give an example of two tracts for the MCB major.

By the way, one of the only courses that has an average grade of an A- in the MCB department, 135A, is only offered every other year, so very few students will be able to even take that as an elective.

What I am trying to say is that, cumulative GPA’s do not predict the difficulty of any major. I am an MCB Major and I have taken many art classes at Berkeley. All art classes have an average grade of an A or A-, every single one of them, So obviously, if you look at my GPA now, it is an average of classes that gives between a B and B- and an A or A- average grade distribution, it is NOT representative of my major difficulty.

Please do not make assumptions about the MCB major based off of your administrative data. This is a major for seriously devoted students.

ucbalumnus · June 25, 2014, 3:20pm

If that is an issue for you, be glad you are not at a very small school where most upper division courses in many majors are offered only once every two years (the bare minimum frequency for having a chance to take the course – too bad if it is offered at the same time as some other course you want to take, or you prefer to take it at a different stage of your progress through college).

Rectifier · July 3, 2014, 4:39pm

@‌ JWeinst1

I posted because I think that some students are using the incorrect data (that the average GPA of MCB majors is below 3.0) to infer that it will be impossible or exceedingly difficult to do well as an MCB major. The correct data demonstrate that the average MCB major has a higher cumulative GPA and a higher GPA IN THEIR MAJOR than the average IB student. Interpret it as you will. I never said that MCB was easy. But IB is not easy either, and the average GPAs in IB are lower than those in MCB.

Incidentally, the implication of your post is not quite accurate I think. You seem to suggest that MCB majors average B to B- grades in their MCB classes, and bring up their average cumulative GPA to 3.42 by taking easier (art?) classes. But as I noted in my first post the average GPA of MCB majors IN THEIR MAJOR is 3.25, which is not bad for an average (and higher than IB), although it is admittedly lower than the cumulative average of 3.42. It turns out that only about a third of the students in MCB classes are MCB majors, so you cannot conclude that the average grades in MCB classes predict average grades of MCB majors in MCB classes.

ucbalumnus · July 3, 2014, 10:27pm

Who are the non-MCB majors taking MCB courses, particularly those other than common pre-med courses (Biology 1A, MCB 102) or lower division courses commonly taken by non-majors for breadth?

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