Duke's Grading

<p>Haha, same here, except my mother threatened to send me to UNC. I'm probably going to push myself harder than they will, though. :)</p>

<p>uva was where my parents thought i would be going... for 10k less (b/c of aid..)</p>

<p>however duke>uva .. but we will see if that extra 10k is worth it</p>

<p>I'm a rising junior and I'm interested in attending Duke and then going on to Med School.</p>

<p>I was just wondering why the average scores are so low on tests? And why do Freshmen feel overwhelmed during the first week? </p>

<p>How tough is the workload?</p>

<p>If you work hard, study hard, and know the material, shouldn't you do well on tests? Thats my philosophy. And time management is key.</p>

<p>BTW: How do NCSSM students do at Duke?
Its the school I will be attending.</p>

<p>Michael_Pham, I'm not even a freshman yet and I can answer that. It's because when a class is graded on a curve and (especially at Duke) the class is filled with the smartest kids from every high school in the country, not everyone can get the A's they were so used to getting over the past 4 years. Some of those former-straight-A students have to get the B, the C, the D, and the F. So when someone enters freshman year with the same POV you have expecting to get A's because they did so in HS, realizes that every other kid in the class feels the same way, works hard, studys hard, knows all the material, and still gets a C, I would imagine it gets a bit overwheming.</p>

<p>I'm sorry, I still don't understand. Could you elaborate on the curve?</p>

<p>Doesn't a curve usually help students? Not pull them down.</p>

<p>Here is the way I've seen curves done: If the scores are pretty bad, then the highest score usually gets bumped up to a 100 or some kind of A and the other scores are adjusted accordingly to that. </p>

<p>I'd like to know how curves are done in college.
Is it similar to Princeton's policy of only letting 35% of their students in any class obtain an A? I think that percentage is right, I read it somewhere earlier this year.</p>

<p>"Doesn't a curve usually help students? Not pull them down."- This is where you are mistaken. Curves do not have to help people at all, they are mearely a way of assuring an even distribution of grades. There are only some many A's, B 's etc to go around because of the curve. As for your other questions, I did not feel that everyone was overwhelmed in the first week last year. I think it was actually pretty chill, especially cuz theres not much work to do at the beginning of the sem. Average scores are low cuz the tests are hard. They make you think its not just memorizing stuff. I'm in engineering and honestly didnt think the workload was that bad. I think it was totally manageable and the difficulty is vastly overexaggerated. I think the difficulty lies in actually getting a good grade, not necessarily the amount of work.</p>

<p>To add to the curve issue, profs will often curve a class to a certain letter grade (usually a B- at Duke). That means, if you plotted the grades on a bell curve, the majority would be in the B-/B range, with an increasingly smaller percentage earning higher and lower grades. Note that percentages aren't factored in. An 80 could be an A on one exam, while a 92 could be a B on another.</p>

<p>An avg. of a 70 on a test is not indicative of anything. It's the grade that the mean is curved to that determines how tough the class is. If the average on a test AFTER curving is 70, then I have some respect for the rigor of the class. If the class is curved to a B+ (as the 3.4 avg. GPA of Duke would indicate), then it's just another grade=inflated class.</p>

<p>For example, the mean on my first orgo midterm last semester was a 80 with a std. dev of around 14 meaning I had to get a 94 to get an A-. My 90 was only a B/B+. The mean on the next midterm was in the mid 50's. I was able to score in the 80's and consequently received a much better letter grade. Curves drag you down on easy tests where everyone scores high. That's why I actually prefer tests where the means are in the 50's.</p>

<p>For those that really know, I have a question. Compared to some of the mid-tier Ivy's (Columbia, UPenn, Brown specfically), how harsh or favorable is Duke's grading compared to those schools?</p>

<p>Thanks for the explanations, I understand now.</p>

<p>To previous posters whose parents/grandparents were insisting on perfect or near-perfect grades to justify Duke's added expense...
If you attend Duke just to post perfect grades for grad school YOU ARE MISSING THE POINT!!! Yes you should do as well as possible, but the collective community - student body, profs, yes even TAs - are the BEST reason to be there. Everyone has so much to offer in and out of the classroom, so many points of view, interests, and passions. NOT to knock UVA or UNC, both excellent places with great programs, but if you were there you would be with ~80% VA/NC residents, there is no way you could meet the same range of students that you will meet at Duke or study with the same opportunities.<br>
Think of a place like Duke as a sun with it's own enormous gravitational pull. By enrolling you have already been pulled into its orbit. That gravitational field WILL alter your path, and the more heat you absorb, the closer you get, the farther you can go when you are ultimately are flung out into space (i.e. the real world) 4 years later.</p>