Does USC grade on a curve?
Depends on the class/major! I believe Marshall does and a lot of the sciences do (and maybe Viterbi?) Some of the GEs are graded on a curve as well. I don’t believe most classes in the arts schools have a curve, though.
^Yup, it really depends on the major and class. Many of my Viterbi classes utilized a curve. For instance, 50% on the midterm equaled a C. This was during the summer session though, so I’m not sure if the average score on the midterm is quite that low during the regular semester version. A lot of GE classes can also grade on a curve. In one of my linguistics classes, the professor basically mentioned a generous curve would be applied at the end of the course to ensure that as many people as possible pass the course. My guess is that they don’t want many students failing GE courses. This reminds me of another linguistics course where most students did so poorly on an exam that the professor suddenly introduced a curve when it was not her intention. There was a programming portion on the exam and the average score was like a 2/10 on that part of the exam…I definitely don’t think she did the best job teaching that part of the course, but I scored a 9.5/10 so I would have been happy without the curve, haha. So yeah, a lot of curves. Not always though 