<p>Everybody says Bio 1B has a ****ty curve and I was wondering what it means when they say that it is curved to an 85%? What makes the curve bad?</p>
<p>actually, only the sections are curved to an 85% average to maintain equanimity. the actual lecture isn’t and the standard straight scale is used for final grades i thought…</p>
<p>Sections are curved to 85% mean, but the final grades are also curved. Basically, the Bio 1B room has a huge canvas paper set up towards the end of the semester and the GSI’s plot out the cumulative scores of students from their sections. This essentially makes a huge distribution of points from which the professors determine the curve.</p>
<p>Look it up on courserank Berkeley-- Bio 1B has a relatively crappy curve giving out ~9% A’s. It gives out fewer A’s but more B’s than Bio 1A. Of course, if you’re a student only shooting for B’s and C’s, then Bio 1B is somewhat generous with that. But who the **** wants those grades? And for a class full of generally useless material and boring memorization, why is it even curved like that?</p>
<p>Wait so if in section you get average on all the quizzes and worksheets than your section grade will probably be an 85% (~B)?</p>
<p>Actually, it’s 22% that get A’s and A-'s, 9% get the A-'s. </p>
<p>Also, your section grade depends on how everyone else in your lab is doing. If you’re doing average but everyone else in your lab is doing great, then your whole lab’s gonna be curved down to an 85%, so the average person ends up somewhere pretty low. If everyone else is doing worse and the whole lab’s average is less than 85%, then you all get curved up and the average person gets the A. </p>
<p>So really, your grade depends on the type of people in your lab and on your GSI.</p>
<p>I thought it was that if the whole lab’s average is less than 85, the lab average gets bumped to 85, if you did above the lab’s average, then you get above 85, but if you did below, you are below 85, but not as low as you were before. The average person doesn’t get an A if the whole lab’s average is less than 85.</p>
<p>Sorry about that, I meant average as in someone who’s doing ok in the class (~85) when everyone else is doing worse, not average as in that lab’s average.</p>