<p>One of my sons at a State U has just noticed a new grading policy in his engineering college. A c- is now considered failing and the class will not count toward graduation or earn any credit. The class must be retaken. This school is rated in the 70's by US news in Engineering</p>
<p>I found that interesting.</p>
<p>Son has a 3.48 so it didn't hit him but a few friends were groaning. It is a bit of a shock to him to see how GPA's drop for many engineering students. Son says there are a lot of major changes among his friends as he works his way through his sophomore year. They say Engineering GPA's pick up after the first two years when you complete most of the required maths, and physics classes. Is there any truth to that?</p>
<p>My other son at a very selective top 25 large private Univ is reporting similar situations with many students struggling despite most of them coming in with 3.8 or higher GPA's from High school. He has a 3.2 and struggled a bit more but has now finished his math requirements.</p>
<p>I told them any GPA above 3.2 in electrical/computer engineering is very solid and nothing to worry about. I think CE/EE is considered one of the tougher engineerings as well. Does that seem reasonable for a GPA after the first two years?</p>
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One of my sons at a State U has just noticed a new grading policy in his engineering college. A c- is now considered failing and the class will not count toward graduation or earn any credit. The class must be retaken. This school is rated in the 70's by US news in Engineering
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<p>While a C-minus will still count for credit at many other schools, it is still considered a detrimental grade in the sense that you usually need a 2.0 GPA to avoid flunking out, and so a C-minus, being worth only a 1.7, can pull you under. I know a guy who entered his final semester with a GPA just barely above passing such that if he got just a few C-minus's in that final semester, he would have flunked out. Imagine the stress of being in your final semester in college and still not knowing whether you might flunk out. </p>
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It is a bit of a shock to him to see how GPA's drop for many engineering students. Son says there are a lot of major changes among his friends as he works his way through his sophomore year.
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<p>I have never understood why engineering grading needs to be as hard as it is. If the purpose is to screen people out, that screening should happen in admissions - just don't admit people who aren't going to make it through anyway. Doing that just wastes everybody's time. If you can't do that, then grade the weeder courses on a P/NR (no grade recorded) basis, such that if you don't pass, your transcript is not marred which means you are free to switch to some other major (or perhaps some other school) with a clean slate. Why not? That's what MIT provides for all first-semester freshmen. A variant on that theme would be to simply allow those people who switch out of engineering to wipe their engineering grades off their transcript. After all, if they're not going to be majoring in engineering anyway, then who cares what their engineering grades are? Let them walk away unmolested. </p>
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They say Engineering GPA's pick up after the first two years when you complete most of the required maths, and physics classes. Is there any truth to that?
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<p>There is significant truth to that, which is why it is often times said that engineering - or at least its grading - actually becomes easier as you move up.</p>
<p>I guess it's best to know early on in your college years then spend a few semesters with bad grades, ie wasting your time and money, because some employers do have GPA as a screening process.</p>
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They say Engineering GPA's pick up after the first two years when you complete most of the required maths, and physics classes. Is there any truth to that?
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<p>This has been my kid's experience. The math/physics sequence is Completed (including O-Chem). Most of the engineering courses are applied math and science not theory and memorization. The acid test was her A in physics lab...and C in the final quarter of the course. Application...fine. Engineering courses...B+ or better. GPA is still above 3.0 despite OChem and the last quarter of physics being Cs.</p>
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They say Engineering GPA's pick up after the first two years when you complete most of the required maths, and physics classes. Is there any truth to that?
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I have never understood why engineering grading needs to be as hard as it is. If the purpose is to screen people out, that screening should happen in admissions - just don't admit people who aren't going to make it through anyway.
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<p>Yes, I agree some screening out should be done in the admissions process... but how do you decide who to screen out? That's the problem with the matter. A 4.0 and 2200 SAT student in HS may not do as great as a mediocre scored person in college. They may get their priorities mixed up and go out drinking all the time and end up skipping class all the time, or may even just have a hard time transitioning from HS to college. The fact is, weed out classes may be the only way to separate the smart and motivated from the others.</p>
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Yes, I agree some screening out should be done in the admissions process... but how do you decide who to screen out?
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<p>Predictive statistics, my friend, predictive statistics. You mine your past student data to find those particular traits that seem to be highly correlated with somebody who later flunks out, and then you simply admit fewer of those students with those traits in the future. It is quite elementary for somebody with a modicum of statistics training to regress a model that would provide a dynamic scoring system to ascertain what are the chances that somebody with the given traits would be likely to flunk out. For example, perhaps you find that those students who got below a certain GPA in just their high school science courses (as opposed to their overall high GPA) were highly likely to end up flunking out of engineering. The answer then is to admit fewer such people in the future. Other traits could be the SAT math score or performance on certain SAT Subject Tests. </p>
<p>Now, will you be able to predict outcomes for every potential engineering student? Of course not, and I am not asking for perfection. I am simply asking for an admissions system that is better than the one we have currently, and the current system is pretty mediocre. When over half of the students who enter engineering programs nationwide don't finish them, there is significant room for improvement. A better system would not only reject more people who are admitted under the current system, but would conversely also admit other people who are rejected under the current system, and the upshot would be a fairer system for more people. The current system is a spray-shot approach; all I am asking for is better aim.</p>
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They say Engineering GPA's pick up after the first two years when you complete most of the required maths, and physics classes. Is there any truth to that?
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<p>I don't think this is quite true at my school. I actually think its the opposite...</p>
<p>It's harder, but chances are one will be more interested in the courses in the last two years rather than the general science courses in the first two years. More interest means more effort put which may mean higher grades.</p>
<p>I agree it's much harder junior and senior year. Every engineering class had a separate lab and the weekly assignment took a lot of time. It was much easier for me the first 2-year. Math/Physics/Chemistry classes were not as time consuming. It still depends on the engineering school, some schools have a Senior Project as a graduation requirement which can take a lot of time and effort.</p>
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I agree it's much harder junior and senior year. Every engineering class had a separate lab and the weekly assignment took a lot of time.
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<p>It can go both ways depending on whether you hit the ground running at the start of college. I did not and did relatively poorly due to factors such as an overloaded schedule and my suitemates having Halo 2 (back when it was new, of course). I had a 4.0 my last two years though after I learned good study habits.</p>