Hello all. I am a sophomore considering transferring to UNC’s business school Kenan Flagler. Many top-end business schools grade on a curve so I was wondering if Kenan Flagler does too. I can’t find the answer anywhere online, so if someone could let me know that would be great. Thanks!
I do not believe they do. It’s my understanding that it’s a very rigorous but collaborative atmosphere.
You will learn over your college career that it doesn’t matter. A Prof can easily harden or weaken a test to obtain the grade distribution that they desire. So, even if everyone who earns a 90+ recieves an ‘A’, a Prof could make the test so hard that the median is a 60%.
Is that typical at UNC? We were told the environment was collaborative and profs were good, approachable, and helpful. Is that actually the case?
Both can be true: the environment can be collaborative with approachable profs, but that doesn’t mean that they maintain an A- average grade. Bcos when all is said and done, the grading system (standard curves, ordinal, formative assessment, other) doesn’t matter , as the median grade (and thus the number of A’s) is whatever the Prof & Department wants it to be.
That’s a fair point. I was just curious to know if your experience at UNC led you to believe the profs have a particular agenda when it comes to grade outcomes.
I can’t speak specifically to UNC K-F on this point, but I do know of a couple of selective schools who do differentiate between UG and Grad students in a class. The ones I know don’t grade on a curve, but they make it overall less demanding: where the grad students might have to do 6 papers over the term, an UG in that class might have to do 3. Or, on an exam the UG may only have to answer 2 out 5 instead of 4 out 5 questions.
(I have Opinions on this, esp when those UGs then turn around and apply to grad school, noting on their app that they have taken grad level classes- but (if they were coming from a school that does that) I knew that they only did the ‘lite’ version of that class. Unsurprisingly, the Grad students in those classes are not particularly impressed either.
YIkes! I can’t blame them!
UNC K-F core classes are graded on a bell-curve to ensure only a certain amount of students recieve A’s. The elective courses are not.