Cornell parents: Did your "superachiever" fail their first test?

Colleges & Universities A-Z Cornell University
10

<p>A bit of a tangent on COE grading curves but in case you’re curious/really worried</p>

<p>For COE classes, you can roughly guess where you stand in the class by doing this:

  1. Figure out how many standard devs you are away from the mean of that particular exam. The std dev should be announced along with the prelim’s mean. You should request that info if they don’t.
  2. For prelims, if you are 1 standard above, you’re about a letter grade above whatever the mean curved grade (usually B- for lower level classes). Likewise, 1 std below means you’re 1 below. This is useful to estimate your current standing. However…
  3. The finals are weighted more and generally whatever std dev you place on the final is a decent indicator of where your final grade will be. Your std dev placement of the prelims will drag you up or down in proportion of how much prelims are worth compared to finals. However…
  4. Due to the weights of homework and possibly participation/project grades/quiz grades, your final grade will be a little bit above this rough estimate, assuming you get ~70% of the points here (which is usually the mean). This is the portion that office hours helps with directly.</p>

<p>For example, I had a math course that played out roughly as such:
mean on final (aggregate grade estimate: B)
2.5 below on prelim 1
silghtly above on prelim 2
1 below on prelim 3 ((-2.5+0.5-1) /3) = -1. So a.g.e shifts to C
Misc weights (a.g.e. shifts to C+)
Final grade I got on transcript: B-.</p>

<p>Like previous posters have mentioned, raw scores don’t matter. Also, from my example, 2.5 std devs below is pretty harsh. A test with a mean of 60 and std dev of 10, means I scored something like 35, which you would call a failing grade by any standard. But as long as you get means/above means on other tests, it’s unlikely that you’d fail a class.</p>

<p>I was quite concerned with that 2.5 below std dev on my first prelim… It’s not too bad though as long as you go into the exam with at least one prelim above or at the mean.</p>

<p>As for “recovering” beyond freshman year, most classes curve to higher letter grades in upperclassmen in general so your cumulative GPA is likely going to increase if you keep getting the average.</p>