<p>I came across this very interesting page on Cornell's website that basically shows the median grades received by students for every course offered a given semester. Using this, we can evaluate the difficulty of a course.</p>
<p>One thing that surprised me was that all the median grades for all courses were generally either A's or B's.</p>
<p>Yeah, lots of people use the median grade reports to find easy filler classes. Sometimes they can be a little misleading though; some upper-level classes have high median grades because they have top students, not because they're particularly easy. Also, introductory courses with high median grades tend to fill up really quickly, so they can be really hard to get into. Don't rely on median grade reports too much to pick out classes.</p>
<p>watch out though. for the class of 2012 on, the median grade of a course will be posted next to the grade on one's transcript.</p>
<p>Median</a> Grades on My Transcript?! | The Cornell Daily Sun</p>
<p>AhhH! So this is mainly bad news I'm assuming?</p>
<p>WHAT?! Are you kidding me? Do other schools have similar policies? Can you imagine how this would affect Cornell students who want to get into grad school? Or even worse, medical, dental or law school?!!</p>
<p>I'm gonna go berserk now!</p>
<p>Actually many schools already list the median grades on student transcripts.</p>
<p>To me, this new policy is the most fair. For years Cornell students had an advantage over students from other colleges because they had access to the median grade reports. Not very many schools publish these reports. In fact, I don't know of another school that does this. This contributed heavily to Cornell's grade inflation. I am not a fan of grade inflation because I think it blurs the distinction between truly great students and the merely good students and tends to water down the prestige of the Cornell degree.</p>
<p>Now, listing the median grades on the transcripts will let future employers and grad schools compare your performance relative to the rest of the class. This seems fair in exchange for the privilege of knowing the median grades before you pick your courses.</p>