<p>I've heard that at colleges, some professors view the classes as secondary to their research, and don't really care about the courses they teach. I'm going to the CAS for biology/premed in the fall, is this true for the professors at penn?</p>
<p>Also, I know that some colleges don't issue individual grades on exams and such, and instead post class averages. I know that this generally will depend on the course and professor, but is this mostly the case at penn?</p>
<p>It’s important to remember that Penn is a major research university. This naturally means that nearly all of the professors are here because of their research. You will find this at all of the ivies and other major universities. However, this does not imply that they care little for the courses they teach. There are indeed some professors who are very poor at lecturing and do not show effort in teaching the material. You can avoid these professors by making careful use of the Penn Course Review. The vast majority, however, are committed to making the students understand the material and do well on the exams. They hold office hours on a weekly basis and are always open for questions. Unlike your high school teachers, the professors have more to worry about than just the courses, but in no way have I felt cheated out of a decent lecture, at least in my biology courses.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’m not quite sure what you mean by this. If by individual grades, you mean A or B-, C+, etc., then no Penn does not issue individual grades until the very end of the semester. You will receive your numeric score and the class mean and standard deviation. While not all classes are normally distributed, you can generally expect to get a letter grade above the class average for every standard deviation above the mean. So for instance, introductory chemistry is curved to a C+. If the class average is a 71 on the exam with a standard deviation of 16, then my 87 should land me a B+. Most classes, however, do not like to curve your grades down so a 90 on an exam yields a B-. And yet some humanities courses don’t curve at all, so what you get is what you get. This means that those exams are not designed to make the middle 50% of the class fail.</p>
<p>Hold on here… Neviar, is your example of curving introductory chemistry to a C+ completely arbitrary or is it a common practice at Penn? I remember hearing the rumor that at Wharton, top 30% is in the A range. So if C+ represent the median, then the top 30% to 50% will receive B+ to C+, and rest 50% will receive C, C- and F? Did I understand it correctly?</p>
<p>Wharton classes are curved to a B or sometimes B+ (I’ve never heard of anyone getting a D or F in a class), I had no idea any classes were curved to C+. That’s just brutal</p>
<p>Most classes in Wharton are curved so that the average is a B or so. A few classes like Accounting like to perform some heavy weed-whacking by curving it so only the top 10% get A’s (I think it was 10% anyway? It may have been 20%. Can’t remember).</p>
<p>Is it hard to work with the curve? I feel like that is one of the main reasons I’m not sure if I’m going to go to Wharton, I’m not sure I can handle the competition with all those intense students.</p>
<p>The curve helps you if you are smart, but can hurts you if you are average. Some people at Wharton like the curve because they just have to do better than 80% of the class to get an A, which is often easier than than actually getting a 95% on tests. </p>
<p>Don’t be too intimidated by Wharton students, many of them are not very quantitative, and there are quite a few athletes/URMS</p>
<p>Sorry, I wasn’t very clear on my second question. What I meant is that some colleges don’t have online accounts or such for students so that they can view their grades in their classes. Also, after exams, the professor may just post the class average, and students would need to make appointments to find out how they did individually.</p>
<p>It’s not really a big deal, but I just like knowing exactly how I’m doing in a class. Could someone let me know if this is how it is done at penn?</p>
<p>But we can always use pass/fail option on those courses right? I’m thinking of using p/f on Econ 101…</p>
<p>What’s the maximum number courses in which we can use P/F option and still graduate? GPA-wise, is it more advantageous to use them in intro class, more advanced classes or those random liberal art requirements?</p>
<p>you can’t use pass/fail on courses that are required for your major / program (so if you’re an econ major, you can’t take econ 101 pass/fail)</p>
<p>so pass/fail is more for taking elective classes that you’re interested in pursuing but don’t feel like investing the full energy that might be required to do well</p>