<p>I heard most of the AEM classes are easy to get As in. Also, would hotel classes be easy too? I'm guessing this since they are 'academically' not the best in Cornell</p>
<p>i know many people in AEM who do minimal work/expend little effort in classes and have 4.0's. it isn't always because the classes themselves are easy- the median grades are often A's or A-'s. </p>
<p>in the long run, those who hunt for easier classes for gpa benefits are biting themselves in the foot. you'll have a hard enough time fulfilling your requirements for your own college and major and/or concentration to take enough AEM or hotel classes (im guessing youre not thinking of AEM or hotel?) to really matter. many find that taking an 'easy' class that they do not need may impede them from focusing and performing better in more important classes. </p>
<p>all that said, there are a couple of notorious 'easy A' classes here. there are not many, but developmental sociology 101 and psychology 101 seem to have that reputation. be careful though- it depends on the professor and semester offered. for example, there are 1 or 2 dsoc professors that assign tons of reading and detail specific tests that require having done ALL of the required reading to a very high level of comprehension- meaning an A will require plenty of work, and is not easy at all.</p>
<p>I honestly find it easier to get As in "harder" classes than notoriously ones, because I find the material in the latter classes to be extremely boring/uninteresting.</p>
<p>seems to be the buzz that psych 101 got harder this year. I am not sure why...I think I've seen someone write it out here. not all questions are from old exams or something? haven't taken the course so I don't know exactly how it's structured.</p>
<p>yea i mentioned that psych 101 got harder, the website is
Psych</a> 101 Website</p>
<p>if anyone is interested in taking it... just read some of latest updates and you'll see the changes basically</p>
<p>I took Psych 101 this fall semester and it wasn't the free limo ride I expected it to be, but it wasn't THAT hard. On the first prelim, I got an B- without studying. For the other two, I spent about a day studying for each and I managed to get an A- overall.</p>
<p>Best strategy I found for cramming and getting A's on the prelims: read the chapter summaries of all the chapters, skim the supplemental readings, do the PsychSims (online flash tutorials of certain subjects which I found rather annoying and pointless), do the practice tests of the past 2 years. All this can be done the day before the test. </p>
<p>That said, the course was rather annoying because he would ALWAYS be behind in lecture, mainly because he showed way too many examples and videos to keep us amused.</p>
<p>What about Math Explorations? or Magical Mushrooms?</p>
<p>oh, you guys might want to consider that Cornell is going to start publishing median grades on your transcripts before enrolling in all easy classes.</p>
<p>Median</a> Grades on My Transcript?! | The Cornell Daily Sun</p>
<p>Well seeing how Psych median used to be an A it def got harder. </p>
<p>The median grade thing is for class of 2012 and onwards isn't it</p>
<p>"oh, you guys might want to consider that Cornell is going to start publishing median grades on your transcripts before enrolling in all easy classes."</p>
<p>Who cares? I'd rather get an A in a class where the median grade is an A instead of getting a B- where the median grade is a C+. Your GPA is still really important.</p>
<p>"The median grade thing is for class of 2012 and onwards isn't it"</p>
<p>Yes.</p>
<p>"seems to be the buzz that psych 101 got harder this year. I am not sure why...I think I've seen someone write it out here. not all questions are from old exams or something? haven't taken the course so I don't know exactly how it's structured."</p>
<p>Yes, psych 101 was a good deal of work this year. Maas decided he wouldn't recycle practice questions, and reduced the amount of extra credit given (why, I don't know). The questions on the exams tested ridiculously obscure facts. I still got an A but I had to do all the readings and make sure I had memorized obscure facts presented in lecture. I didn't learn much from this course. It's not worth your time.</p>
<p>I wonder what hte median will be. I bet less people will be taking his class cause of the lowered median grade.</p>
<p>but the "class of 2012" is for students who are in the class of 2012 and entered cornell fall 08...not for those who entered in 07</p>
<p>yea. good thing im in 2011!! yay</p>
<p>"I wonder what hte median will be. I bet less people will be taking his class cause of the lowered median grade."</p>
<p>My guess would be an A- or a B+. Looking at previous median grade reports there's been years where the median for psych 101 was a B!</p>
<p>oh wow, maybe maas was on leave that year haha</p>
<p>I'm in the Cornell class of 2012, and this just sounds like bad news. Seeing as grades are as inflated as they already are, publishing median grades seems to me to emphasize that more. So what if I take a harder math class? The class is curved to a median grade of A- anyway, so it's not like a very good A+ is going to look any better than an average, curved A+. It's not like I can do any better than an A+. Of course, I may be wrong, and we'll have to see how things pan out in the next few years, but I find many problems with the proposed benefits of this policy unless there starts to be a much wider grade distribution at Cornell.</p>
<p>EDIT: I just want to add that students choose classes with higher median grades because there exist classes with higher median grades. If that is a problem, then it is more effective for the professors to correct it instead of hoping to psychologically discourage students from taking "easier" classes (easier under a completely arbitrary scale). I don't want Cornell to experiment with this new policy in a way that might affect my future if there are better alternatives.</p>
<p>I am, of course, biased; my year has had to deal with the new SAT writing section, an unusually competitive year for college applications, and a bad economy, amongst other things. This is just the icing on the cake.</p>
<p>Id say the majority of the classes aren't curved. The curved ones are the hard ones that would fail many people if they weren't curved. That's why the grades are inflated for those classes. For example, the third prelim grade for Orgo last semester was a 52 with SD of 16 ish. If it wasn't inflated, 80% of the class would be walking out with F. Therefore, I don't think it's accurate to say grades are "inflated", sure the professors can make easy exams and we all walk out with 90s without curves but they don't do that because they want us to learn the concepts and know when to apply them. </p>
<p>A lot of the classes have high medians because they are just easy. Astro 101 for example, even if there weren't as many repeated questions, I feel that the average will still be at least a A- if not a A. It's because the material taught and covered in the book is easy. They can't start with extremely hard astro because it's only an Intro class. Higher level classes also have higher medians because the people who take those classes are the ones who are good at it.</p>
<p>And A+ looks good anywhere, even if the average is A+...</p>
<p>You're right of course =). I've tried taking a few of the harder courses, and maybe that's why I felt what I did. I also admit to peeking at the median grades to get an idea of how hard it would be to get a better grade in a class. But I also think that an A or A+ in a class with a median of A or A+ does not look the same as an A or A+ in a class with a median of B. If tougher classes end up being curved anyway, wouldn't students in quite a few of those classes be just as adversely affected?</p>
<p>If you think of it that way, you can assume so. Of course A+ in a B- median class looks great and better than A+ in A class. And of course you'll feel good about it but in the future for grad schools their decisions won't really be affected because of 1 or 2 of such cases among your many classes. It's impossible to really classify which class as "hard" and which isn't. The professor can easily make an easy class hard and vice versa. And also people's definitions of hard are different. I think a hard class is a class that's hard to get a good grade in, A- and up. Others might think that hard is a class that teaches stuff thats hard to grasp. In my case, I don't think a class with A- median is hard even if the class is difficult in terms of concepts or something. </p>
<p>A friend of mine took linear algebra for math majors and the material looked challenging. She said she answered like 2 questions on the final exam and she ended up with a A in the class. I'd consider a class like that easy even though the stuff is hard probably.</p>