<p>A distinction without a difference. STEM classes are curved. Period.</p>
<p>Over the course of a term, a professor will readily adjust the rigor of the tests, such that there is zero chance of everyone doing well on each and every test. Thus, by the end of the term, xx % have a 90%, yy% fall into the 80-89% ranges, etc. The Prof will have a nice curve, with standard deviation, etc.</p>
<p>Heck, at my D’s college, which used an 70/80/90 scale, the Organic prof even told them as much. To wit: everyone did extremely well on the mid-term (mean = 78%), so don’t expect the second test to be as easy. It wasn’t, with a mean of 66%.</p>
<p>Of course, higher numbers are ALWAYS better than lower, but I would guess that Stanford grads with a 3.55/31 have an extremely high acceptance to med school. I haven’t seen a matrix of Stanford’s acceptances, but a applicants from WashU, a similar prestigious – and rigorous – college, have an 80-90% acceptance rate with those numbers. </p>
<p>So much for the theory of accounting for grade inflation. :)</p>
Interpretation: It is more challenging to be a med school student in any med school than to be a premed at Stanford. ( even though the attrition rates are at these two places drastically different.)</p>
<p>Or, it is holier to be the former than to the latter, because the bottom 50% of the former are treated much better than the bottom 50% of the latter.</p>
<p>Or, the top 10% of the premeds at any school is better than the bottom 50% of the premeds at Stanford. And the justice is served only in this way by the society (esp., in the CC community.)</p>
<p>Probably too strong a claim. You may be more accurate if you say “typical pre-med classes are curved”. Small upper-level or honors courses are more likely to vary from your claim.</p>
<p>“Or those that can’t do well enough in premed might go into I banking and do lot better financially”
-Well, the Rock stars, Hollywood A-lister and various sport stars are doing even better. Let’s have these as a goal, or maybe we should go down from the Cloud # whatever and jsut work hard on whatever we are up to, where we are fitting the best. Thinking that everybody is going to be in millions doing I banking is about the same as thinking that every theatre major will be into millions (which will never happen to the majority of them).</p>
<p>“A distinction without a difference. STEM classes are curved. Period”</p>
<p>That is not true. It is possible that everyone in this class can get an A if they work very hard. They don’t all have time to spend on one class. Biology is a straight forward subject. They are making it hard for no reason. There is no defined number of As in this class which is the goal of curving. </p>
<p>There are many in ivy league who end up in investment banking. Based on what Yale parents say, that seems to be easier goal for Yale students than Premed at Yale.</p>
<p>“They are making it hard for no reason.”
-The reason is always the same - to weed out the weaker, so that Med. School pool of applicants from specific UG is stronger/tougher which creates a certaian UG’s reputation.<br>
It is true absolutely everywhere in ALL majors. If there is not enough space for everybody, they take much more and then weed them out, so that the class is much stronger. I has happened to me in CS at CC. Only 30% of first programming class has survived. The reason - Computer Lab (very long time ago, when we actually had to be in the lab to complete assisgnements) simply could not handle as many as it was in a class.<br>
If they want a high percentage of graduates to be accepted to Med. Schools to boost reputation year after year, they will weed them out in great numbers. D’s first Bio (at state public) was known weed out killer. Good that it was part of the first semester in freshman year. They did not waste lots to figure out if pre-med is for them or not. It included all those Honors valedictorians with As in AP Bio, which was a joke in comparison to a class that was taught by 3 profs, all 3 being at every lecture, teaching his sub-specialty.</p>