Calc2 Grading System

Colleges and Universities A-Z Purdue University
1

Hello. Helicopter mom here.

Son is a freshman struggling in MA162 (5 credit Cal2 course). Gets A’s on quizzes and homeworks (or so he tells me) but blew first exam (36, class abg 68) and was average on second exam (54, class avg 58). Still one more exam plus final to go. Cannot get a grade below C- to graduate from FYE into an engineering major.

He has a chance to withdraw from the course and retake it next semester without a bad grade afffecting his GPA and he won’t be any later graduating because of that. But the class does not use Blackboard to show grades and there is nothing posted on the departmental or course website explaining the grading scale that I can find at least. If there is a big curve, perhaps his first exam will not impact him too severly but it seems impossible to assess.

We will have a conversation about this situation later today and I wanted to have some information at the ready since his advisor is out on medical leave and he forgot to bring this up with the substitute advisor.

Any Purdue grads or current students out there care to weigh in?

2

Since I cannot delete the above post, I will share what I learned from my son today in case it helps anyone else. There are 700 points total for the course, three 100 pt exams, one 200 point final exam, and 100 pts each for homework average and quiz average. No idea if there is a curve at the end or not, but it looks like in my son’s case that the quizzes and homework scores will negate the first exam and he has decided to stick it out.

3

My daughter struggled with Calc2 and there was no curve for her class. She ended up retaking it during the summer .

4

I’ve talked to some students here, and they’ve said that the grading system described in the syllabus is not very accurate and the actual grading process is a secret.

They could be lying or speculating, but that’s just what they’ve told me.