<p>At my school an A or > is a 4.0. A-=3.7. A B+=3.3, B=3.0, B-=2.7, C+=2.3, etc.</p>
<p>Do you think that benefits you? Personally I hate it because I rarely get solid A's, it's always an A-. And I rarely get +'s in any class, whether it's a A, B, or C.</p>
<p>As a freshman I hate it. I'm sure I'll get used to it though (at least I better hope I will).</p>
<p>I'm sure a lot of students had that grading scale in high school as well, so its not a transition for everyone.</p>
<p>I like it, because the difference between an A- and a B+ is not as significant as the difference between a solid A and a solid B. And I think it's easier on the professors as well: they don't have to deal with students who want a .25% grade bump to get an A rather than a B...</p>
<p>where i go</p>
<p>A = 4.0 (90+)
B+ = 3.5 (87-89)
B = 3.0 (80-86)</p>
<p>etc</p>
<p>Are your subjects especially hard at your school? That's pretty good grade inflation otherwise.</p>
<p>TBH it doesn't really matter how your school assigns grades, med schools/law schools redo the grades to their systems, and they get a copy of the average school GPA.</p>
<p>"Are your subjects especially hard at your school? That's pretty good grade inflation otherwise."</p>
<p>Not particularly, there are the usual failed courses like orgo and chem, but again, nothing drastically out of the norm. So yes, grade inflation must be huge here, and yes the grading system is great. Especially for people not going to grad school and just have to list the GPA on the resume</p>
<p>=)</p>
<p>I like it since, as someone said, there isn't a big difference between grades. So it's more bearable when you miss a grade by a small amount.</p>
<p>I liked the system where an A was simply an A (no A+'s or A-'s) but there were B+'s etc. I'm currently on the system in which the only grade missing is an A+. I often find myself sitting on the A-/A line, and the difference isn't that much quality, just a bit of grade-grubbing.</p>
<p>Here I think our system is A: 4.0, A-: 3.7, B+: 3.5, B: 3.3, B-:3.0 and so on, or something like that. I suppose in the end it ultimately ends up benefitting me because if I miss an A, it's probably not by much so it doesn't hit my GPA so much.</p>
<p>I don't like it !</p>
<p>It's the same at my school. It's tough, but what can we do?</p>
<p>my school, UNC-Chapel Hill:</p>
<p>a 4.0
a- 3.7
b+ 3.3
b 3.0
b- 2.7
c+ 2.3
c 2.0</p>
<p>...its tough and it sucks knowing some other colleges are more lenient and some even have A+ which is a 4.3. (my college doesnt)</p>
<p>I like it when I get a plus grade and hate it when I get a minus grade.</p>
<p>Really? I prefer an A- over a B+, but that's just me.</p>
<p>i don't like it. i wish they could just use a 100pt scale. It would give you your precise grade and leave nothing to the imagination. Let's face it, I could get an A at my school (it will be equal to 93+). But someone else at my school or even at another school could get an A as well. Difference would be that maybe I got 99% (I wish!) and the other person got 94%. Certainly not the same, but under an A it all looks like the same.</p>
<p>Percentage grades don't provide a fair comparison across professors, fields and universities. </p>
<p>Percentage grades really only work if the expectation is that students achieve 100%. That's true for many classes but not all. For example, one of my math professors thought it was funny to assign unsolved problems every now and then. Should students be penalized for a quirk of their professor? Other classes have averages in the 20s or 30s just because they are so hard. Again, you cannot put those numbers on a transcript.</p>
<p>And a percentage system seems really arbitrary for essays. It might be hard enough to make a distinction between a B and a B- paper, but what would you assign to an A paper? 95? 100? Some things simply are not meant to be evaluated on a continuous scale.</p>
<p>but you see, in the end that's what letter grades come from. they come from percentages. think about it. most professors take the percentages they assign on tests, homework, quizzes, etc. and convert them to letter grades. how else can they accurately average out all those letter grades. even converting letter grades to the 4.0 scale doesn't give you an accurate picture of the grade the student gets when you have to convert it back to a letter grade.</p>
<p>you can try to do it from letter grades, but then that gets inaccurate. as an example, take a class that grades the following: 40% final, 40% midterm, 20% paper. This one student got an 85 on final, 95 on midterm, 70 on quiz in this class.</p>
<p>take the letter grade system that's commonly used with -'s = x.33 and +'s = .67
A = 93+ (4.0)
A- = 90-92
B+ = 87-89
B = 84-86 (2.0)
B- = 80-83
C+ = 77-79
C = 74-76 (2.0)
C- = 70-73
D+ = 67-69
D = 64-66 (1.0)
D- = 60-63
F = below 60</p>
<p>convert the percentages to give a letter grade for the final grade.</p>
<p>so we know the student got a B on final, A on midterm, C- on quiz (or a 3.0, 4.0, and .67, respectively). do the conversions to get the final grade and you get (3.0<em>.40) + (4.0</em>.40) + (1.67*.20) = 1.2 + 1.6 + .334 = 3.134. of course this 3.134 doesn't exist on a letter grade system, the professor has to round off to a B (3.0), but some professors might choose to give you a B+ since you did slightly more than a B.</p>
<p>OR</p>
<p>convert those grades from percentages and leave them as is.</p>
<p>(85<em>.40) + (95</em>.40) + (70*.20) = 34 + 38 + 14 = 86. the professor has no other choice but to give you a B. there's no question about it, unless the professor doesn't stick to the grading rubric he has set (and not all do).</p>
<p>also all those problems you mentioned, could be used against any other grading system. As for your examples, professors curve, that's how they assign grades even in a percentage system when average student gets very low grades. I know this because I had a high school math teacher who gave near impossible problems to us and deducted points for every little mistake we made. The class average on tests low 20s and the range was around 15-30. On that scale anyone who had the 30 or higher got the 100, a 23 got 75, and so on. it even happens in college. one of my IT professors had a test in which the class range was from 22 to 36. Took the same approach and showed us the conversions in class from percentage to letter grades. and even for professors who give extra credit on tests and homework, in the end you still max out, whether it's a percentage system or letter grade system. For example say you got 105 in a class, you're not going to get an A+ in a school that doesn't give out an A+. It'll still show up as an A. And likewise in percentage grading systems, it'll show up as a 100. Just means you did more work to ensure you got the max grade.</p>
<p>percentage grades aren't arbitrary, they are accurate. even for essays. in fact last semester i had 2 professors who combined letter grades for papers. I had on one paper a grade of B+/B which was an 86.5. Happened on tests too. Got a A-/B+ which was a 89.5.</p>
<p>i think the reason most students like it is because it can hide the fact that they may not have done the same work as the other student that got the A, but for anyone who looks at the transcript it's still an A even if you really got the 93 and the other students who got an A got 99.</p>
<p>in my head i always convert letter grades to percentages. and it shows me so far that i've been right around my high school and middle school average which is A-/B+. it definitely looks nicer on a 4.0 system, i'll tell you that much.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The class average on tests low 20s and the range was around 15-30. On that scale anyone who had the 30 or higher got the 100, a 23 got 75, and so on.
[/quote]
If the range is 15-30 (let's suppose those are strict upper and lower bounds), it would be completely random to scale 30 to a 100. Why not scale it to a 95? Suppose there is a second section of the same class taught by a different professor who does not need to curve grades. In that class the best student got a 96, which is not scaled up to 100. On paper it would look like the 100/30 student was better than the 96 student, which is not necessarily true. You don't have those problems on a 4.0 scale - it would all amount to a 4.0. </p>
<p>I think a continuous grade system would be hell for professors. Just think about how much more tempting grade-grubbing would be. If a professor makes a controversial decision that would change the student's grade by 1% but does not affect his/her grade on a 4.0 scale, the student doesn't care. But on a percentage scale the student might very well care.</p>
<p>On the other hand, students would be even more tempted to pick their classes by the grading habits of a professor. Whether a professor scales the top grade up to 100 or to 95 could be a deal-breaker for some students, especially if they are shooting for Latin honors or some competitive scholarship. On a 4.0 scale that would not be a consideration at all.</p>
<p>And at least at my college in my major, such a system would actually discourage student achievement. I am a math major and our homework is usually graded by a graduate student TA who also holds problem sessions. Typically students who go to problem sessions get higher grades on the homework because they write out everything just as the TA wants them to. But they learn less in the process because they get half of the solutions from the TA instead of thinking through the problems themselves. Students who do not go to TA sessions might lose a few points here and there (e.g. for quoting Schroeder-Bernstein when the TA is looking for an explicit bijection), but in the end they learn a lot more.</p>