<p>I just received this reply from my teacher after I emailed him a project:
"Nice work. Your group received a 18/20."</p>
<p>18/20= .90</p>
<p>This is a required elective (distribution requirement), which is supposed to be a GPA-boosting fluff area. There are only five kids in the class of over twenty that have A's, the highest of which is a 94%. Our class ranks are shot.</p>
<p>how is that grade deflation?</p>
<p>It’s a religion class. I know a kid who does no work in the other class that most people take, he has a 98. My school realizes that religion is extra work that doesn’t count for anything, so they just make it really easy so it doesn’t take away from work in difficult classes that actually matter.</p>
<p>It’s a new teacher and a new course. Most people take this terrible ethics class that we like to call “Don’t Get an Abortion 101”.
“World Religions” sounded more interesting and useful. Little did we know it would be “zomg aren’t Buddhists crazy? Here’s a B for your efforts.” class.</p>
<p>EDIT: I guess I should’ve specified that these classes are understood to be easy, and everyone gets the same GPA bonus from them (which isn’t included in the academic GPA sent to colleges, only our own crazy class rank weighting system). People who took this different class out of intellectual interest are being penalized.</p>
<p>we have to take 4 religions as well, but they ARE included in the transcripts sent to colleges, and our class rank. ********.</p>
<p>Wait, so it’s only grade-deflating because it doesn’t conform to your standards of grade inflation?</p>
<p>Srsly, an A- is a really good grade. Try harder next time if you want to score higher.</p>
<p>And if it doesn’t matter for colleges, who the hell cares if you receive the ghastly A- instead of an A. Assuming it’s a semester long elective and you have a perfect 4.0 elsewhere, it will lower your cumulative GPA by about… ~.007 points. Nothing groundbreaking. And colleges care not for rank, anyway.</p>
<p>lol, if you think that’s grade deflation</p>
<p>What Moodrets said.</p>
<p>What everyone else said.</p>
<p>
But here’s the thing, that 90% is probably the highest grade he gave out, and the grades he gives are pretty random. It isn’t as if there is a bunch of work and I’m not doing it properly, these are simple subjective assignments and he just gives out bad grades.</p>
<p>The mean on the last test was 81 (half of the grade was an essay), and he did not curve.</p>
<p>
My grades weren’t great in 9th and 10th grade, and this class will prevent me from getting into the top 10% the beginning of senior year. I’m screwed. Every top college is like 95% from the top decile, presumably the rest who got in are hooked. If I’d gone the typical route and taken the useless Medical Ethics things would be working out well.</p>
<p>shouldn’t the mean on a test be 70? or maybe 75, i forget. if the teacher wants it to be a bell curve clustered around C, which is what grades were at one point supposed to be…</p>
<p>Maybe if it was OChem, not a high school fluff subject.</p>
<p>For freshman science, only 5 people out of like…50 got As the first semester. (2 classes)
Our teacher insisted that it stays that way because she didn’t want to make it too easy to get an A, otherwise we wouldn’t try as hard. And it was our first year of high school, so she wanted to prepare us.</p>
<p>I got a B first semester and was quite upset because up until then, school was a piece of cake, I never really had to try. But, she helped me so much. The preparation I did for her class prepared me for AP Chem and I learned that I needed to study more than just skimming over my notes right before the test (at least in science haha). I’m actually quite happy I got my B instead of waiting until soph year to find out what high school classes are really like…</p>
<p>Well, I’m done venting, it just frustrated me off to get a “nice work” along with a class-rank-condemning grade. Oh well, U Chicago seems to be willing to bend with the rank thing if your SATs are good. And Grinnell looks nice for the huge acceptance rate (what the hell is up with that?).</p>
<p>Bye, MIT, I hardly knew ye.</p>
<p>^ Well, compared to your classmates who probably got lower grades, it was “nice work”. Don’t worry too much about one grade :)</p>
<p>don’t worry. grade deflations happen all the time. if you can explain it to your college and explain the situation, they shoudl be more understanding. you can talk about the rigor and what not and it’ll be more acceptable. also, if the class involves a standarized test like an AP Class (just as a scenario) getting a 5 or 7 (depending AP or IB) can also convince admissions you know the material well.</p>
<p>If this were ■■■ I’d click the “you deserved it” button. Then again, I do that with all the FMLs.</p>