<p>Are the intro classes such as physics, calc, chem, and english much harder than that of ap classes taken in high school? Will haven already taken the ap classes help with getting good grades? Also, I hear a lot about GT's difficult coursework. Is it over exaggeration? Is it really almost impossible to get 3.5 or higher?</p>
<p>English probably not, but physics, chem and calc will definitely be a step up. I hear often from TA’s for the intro classes how poorly students understand those respective areas even after doing well on the AP exams.</p>
<p>It depends what you study but I assume you mean a 3.5+ in engineering? No it’s not impossible to get a 3.5 but it certainly isn’t easy. The thing about GT, unlike high school, is that professors only hand out a certain % of A’s B’s etc per semester. Because of this you are essentially competing against other students, who are just as smart as you or smarter, for grades.</p>
<p>why do they hand out only a certain % of a’s and b’s ?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s a department guideline really. In graduate classes in ECE, for example, they aim to give the classes about a 3.2 or 3.3 average. For undergrad, it’s more like a 2.8 or 2.9. It’s not so much that they hand out a certain percentage of A’s or B’s, it’s that it looks bad for the professor if they give out too many high grades (or too many low grades).</p>
<p>“For undergrad, it’s more like a 2.8 or 2.9”</p>
<p>oh crap. what have I gotten myself into 
haha. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to work hard and manage my time:)</p>
<p>Grades are curved for two reasons: </p>
<p>1) if you set a goal of “this is the level of understanding for an A, B, etc” a priori, students never meet the goal.</p>
<p>2) Unless you’ve taught the class 20 times, it’s nearly impossible to design a test that gets people into a well dispersed GPA spread. You can’t give 50% failing (F), but you can’t give 50% excellent (A). If we didn’t curve, you’d probably end up with one or the other (probably the former). </p>
<p>A 3.5 GPA is pretty difficult in engineering, but not impossible. Plenty of students do it, but 3.55 is the cutoff for Highest Honor (Top 5% or so). So if you get a 3.55, that means you beat out 19 other students. And remember, those 19 students you have to beat also have 3.8 UW high school GPAs and 2000+ SAT scores.</p>
<p>Tech accepts about 3x more students than they should. If you don’t think you’ll be an average engineer it’s almost fun seeing everyone else’s grades slip under yours as the semester progresses.</p>
<p>A big warning: classes are nowhere near as hard as they are time-consuming. Manage time wisely.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Apparently the professors get in trouble if they are too far on one side of the scale. The best thing you can do for yourself is to look at the grade distributions for the professors before signing up for the course. The difficult and amount of work for a particular course can vary a lot depending on who you take.</p>
<p>How can we look up the grade distributions for certain professors?</p>
<p>According to the old oscarweb page [OSCAR</a> Web has moved](<a href=“http://oscarweb.gatech.edu%5DOSCAR”>http://oscarweb.gatech.edu) it can be accessed from <a href=“http://www.sga.gatech.edu/critique/Search.php[/url]”>http://www.sga.gatech.edu/critique/Search.php</a></p>
<p>I can’t get the page to load but you probably have to be a current student to access this anyway.</p>
<p>It seems to be down right now.</p>
<p>Anyone can search and see the grade distribution. You have to have a current GTID to be able to see the professor scores (students grade professors on a scale of 1 to 5 for things like quality of instruction, difficulty of exams, number of assignments, etc.)</p>
<p>ok 2 quick questions about this. I’m majoring in something not engineering, so is this grade distribution strictly in engineering, or is it throughout the entire institute in management, arts, etc. majors?</p>
<p>and about the classes stuff, is it the same for minors in engineering? I’m thinking of doing AE as a minor and just wondering if it’s the same as the major stuff.</p>
<p>Don’t you have to be an engineer to minor in AE? I thought the program exists for ME’s to focus in propulsion or EE’s to focus on flight controls, MSE’s to focus on airframe materials, etc.</p>
<p>The distributions will be the same for the major and minor courses - major and minor classes are exactly the same, except students seeking a minor take less than students seeking a major. </p>
<p>Other departments have similar distributions, but MGT has a higher average GPA, Math will have a lower distribution, etc.</p>
<p>Sorry, but I know Tech rather well, and I can promise you that the idea that “the professors get in trouble if they are too far on one side of the scale” is simply untrue. Some professors might claim that such a policy exists in order to justify their own grading schemes, and there might be some departments (probably in engineering) that have grading norms, but I am absolutely certain that there is no Georgia Tech policy on grade distributions. Most faculty are appalled at the idea that grades would be curved down based on some preconceived notion of how many A, B, C, etc grades will be assigned. Much more common is: “if everyone earns an A, everyone gets an A.” Unfortunately, that just doesn’t happen very frequently.</p>
<p>As someone has written, students certainly can look at grade distributions – but remember that sometimes the easy graders are lousy teachers.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Obviously, there is no written rule, but you will get a visit from the dean or dep. chair if your distribution is too far off the mark, especially if you’re not yet tenured (at least in engineering, which is what we’re discussing).</p>
<p>And I think I know the school rather well, also ;)</p>
<p>G.P., so MGMT majors can’t do AE as a minor then? and if that’s the case, are there any other Engineering minors, I didn’t really see one.</p>
<p>Call AE and check, but you would need so many prerequisites, that you might as well just double major. In addition to the 18 hours for the minor, you need Calc I, Calc II, Calc III, Diff EQ, Physics I, and Physics II (24 hours), all not required by the MGT department. 42 hours is three additional semesters. </p>
<p>Minors aren’t usually offered in engineering programs because they’re pretty pointless. A student with an B.S. Mgt degree and a minor in AE won’t be able to perform AE work, either legally or practically. On the other hand, the opposite (B.S. AE with a certificate in MGT) is very common.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I didn’t say that anybody would get in trouble, I just said there are guidelines for what the GPA should be at what level of class. My co-advisor told me that one semester he happened to give out no A’s and faced criticism for it from the department chair despite the fact that his years of experience told him that no student in the class had A-quality work.</p>
<p>I already changed majors once, can I change again? I begin Tech in the fall.</p>