<p>Hi!
I took my first graduate seminar as an undergrad with the option of using it for my grad requirements. I will start my masters this fall. I'm not sure I should use the course because I got an A- and I really want to go for a PhD. I have heard that grades are inflated (is that the word?) in grad school, so I wonder if an A- would look bad? I know I might end up getting more A-s and even Bs, but I want to reduce those as much as I can.
What are your thoughts fellow grad students?</p>
<p>Generally in grad school a B is passing, and an A is an A. In my experience, it was about as difficult to get an A in grad courses as upper-level undergrad classes; it's just that B and C get collapsed into one grade (especially for multidisciplinary classes, where you can get a pretty low grade and still manage a B).</p>
<p>I can't really say much, since I know my program is a bit of an exception to the rule, as plenty of people still manage to get Cs (myself included) and getting above a B is still pretty hard to impossible, depending on the people that are in the class. I had one class last quarter where grades were curved down, and my 93 was still a B. :mad: Extra bitter about that one because most of my friends would skip class all the time and wind up borrowing my notes and asking me for help on the homework.</p>
<p>Ow, 93=B? I thought by grad school, the name of the game was NOT how can we cause stress and weed people out. This is really disappointing to hear. Why do they do that? Is that typical?</p>
<p>The grad program here at Caltech seems to be a bit unique in that it's still quite possible to get plenty of Ds and Cs for grades, though it's not seen as "that big of a deal" for my program, since we're mostly taking classes up against Caltech physics grads and undergrads, and a good number of us weren't even physics majors in undergrad (I'm taking 9 physics course, 3 math courses, and 3 materials courses. I'm a Materials Science grad student.).</p>
<p>I think at most other schools it's more standardized. By that point in your scholastic career, they want to you to be in the lab as much as possible, and you can't do that if you're freaking out about barely pulling a B in all of your classes. And freaking out time is reserved for studying for candidacy. :)</p>
<p>Yeah I have to agree with RacinReaver, even though I'm not at Caltech. It seems that getting an A in the core graduate classes in my program is at least as difficult as getting an A in undergrad (and I'm talking about competitive pre-med undergrad classes). I too had heard that grades were inflated in graduate school and that has not been my experience at all so far. In the classes I've taken (neuroscience), a few people get As, and the majority of students get some sort of B grade (B+, B, B-). It is rare to get a C, and people who get a C usually have to take the class again. In my opinion, the reason why very few students get Cs is not because grades are inflated, it's because the students have already been carefully selected. The people who got Cs in undergrad probably didn't make it into a good PhD program, so you're left with the A and B students from undergrad, who still get As and Bs.</p>
<p>Another thing that I had heard about grades in graduate school, is that grades do not matter anymore at all. But I have recently heard the opposite, because it seems that when you apply for certain research grants, they ask for all of your grades in undergrad AND graduate courses, and that at this point graduate grades do matter. Only a couple of people have told me that though, so I'd be very interested in hearing other people's opinions on the subject.</p>
<p>yeah I'm curious too. What about masters programs and trying to go for PhD?</p>
<p>ticklemepink:</p>
<p>I am not sure what you question is exactly? Are you asking do grades matter in a masters for a PhD program? If so...I still think they matter less. From some personal communication and experience (yes, anecdotal so take with a grain of salt) PhD programs evaluate you on the basis of your undergrad performance when considering you amongst the other applicants. That is to say, they accept you on the merits of your undergrad, but also take into account the experience you have from your masters after the fact. </p>
<p>Think of it this way, it would not be really fair to give you an advantage over the majority of straight from undergrad applicants just because you have a masters. Having a masters is not a requirement for admittance so even if you never graduate with your masters, you are still admitted to the PhD based on your strengths as an undergraduate plus the years of lab experience. My undergrad GPA was around 3.75, yet my masters was only 3.5 or so and the one C I have ever received was in my masters, but this did not seem to affect my applications.</p>
<p>So to the OP, I would not worry about an A- in your masters career. Hope that helped some.</p>
<p>Thanks all for your replies!!!!!<br>
Hum, just one more thing though, I am in the humanities, so we don't have lab work to do. I am honestly just worried that I won't be admitted into any decent PhD program because my undergrad was rather mediocre (3.3gpa) so I am trying to improve my chances.
Is keeping the A- in the humanities the same as in the sciences???
BTW I'm in a foreign language masters program :)</p>
<p>Thanks all!</p>
<p>Lumperica,</p>
<p>An A minus in the humanities is fine.</p>
<p>Tmp,
Contrary to another poster's statement, PhD admission committees will look much more closely at your MA grades than your undergrad grades. Bs at the Masters level
are BAD. They are clear signals to a PhD admissions committee from the professor in whose class you earned that B. The signal is: "Not good." Therefore, don't get any Bs in your MA program if you wish to succeed in PhD admissions.</p>
<p>PhD grades are another story. They <em>should</em> be all As (in the humanities), but earning a B means "don't make the mistake of asking that professor for a letter of rec when you go on the job market."</p>
<p>In my PhD program, only about 10-20% of students get As (all grades are posted publicly under student ID number) in the core courses and getting Bs is not considered bad at all. In fact, it might even be seen as desirable by some professors and prospective advisers, who perceive it as an indication that you are devoted to lab work more than to studying for tests (although I personally don't agree with that idea). Some of my classmates, while they were doing rotations, had their PI tell them something like: "if you want to join my lab, you'd better be in here all the time, including nights and weekends, so forget about classwork, and just get passing grades in your courses". </p>
<p>The idea behind those kinds of comments is that at the PhD level, you're supposed to do research, not cram for tests like you did in undergrad. But the underlying assumption is that you can do that because graduate grades don't matter. But since a couple people have told me about the importance of graduate grades in applying for funding, I am wondering whether this assumption is actually true. Does anyone have any input on that? How important are graduate grades for grant applications in the sciences (e.g. NSF grants, NIH grants, etc.)?</p>
<p>I wholly defer to Prof X for advice in Humanities, my experience is in the sciences, which is obviously a lot different. </p>
<p>I tend to agree with Neurotoxin...sometimes you have to choose between doing well in a class and getting work done in the lab, if you can do both, great, but your career is based more off what you accomplished then what your transcript says.</p>
<p>As for applying for funding, I am not sure. I have also heard that grades do apply for that, but I have not had to do that yet so I have no personal experience.</p>
<p>I know they ask for transcripts, but I don't know how much weighting is given to your grades in graduate school. Because, really, they're giving you money to do research, not take more classes.</p>
<p>I did my masters in the social sciences but I took both social science and humanities classes. I found that the grading was at least as hard there, if not harder, than in my undergrad. And no one I knew in grad school was getting straight A's. It may be the school I went to (U. Chicago) but a B was considered pretty standard.</p>
<p>What happens at your school if you don’t pass the phD qualifier exam?</p>
<p>RacinReaver- I am headed to Caltech for grad school this fall, and I heard from them that any classes we take would be pass/fail?.. Am I totally making this up?</p>
<p>Concur with the information given in this thread. Theoretically, the grading is easier, but once you consider that the people in grad classes mostly come from the top 1/3 to 1/4 of your undergrad classes, I think it’s quite possible that your GPA can be lowered by grad classes if you go to a moderately difficult school. I actually took grad classes the last year at my alma mater to boost my GPA since they were easier to get A’s in than undergrad classes since they typically had less homework.</p>
<p>“What happens at your school if you don’t pass the phD qualifier exam?”</p>
<p>you don’t get a PhD. if your school awarded a masters as a formality, then you’ll still get that. but if you don’t pass the qualifier (programs vary on whether or not they let you re-take the exam), then your PhD career is done at that school.</p>
<p>especially for humanities. that’s why 6 out of 10 people who enter the PhD program don’t get their degrees. they can’t pass the exams.</p>
<p>I thought the issue with humanities was a high drop-out rate, not necessarily a high rate of failure at the qualifying exams. But I’m not a humanities student, so I may be completely wrong here.</p>
<p>Generally, though, StrangeLight is correct: if you don’t pass the qualifying exam, you may or may not get a chance to remediate or retake the exam, depending on the program and on your specific situation, but you ultimately must pass the qualifying exam in order to become a Ph.D. candidate and receive a Ph.D. at that institution. Qualifying exam pass rates vary widely between disciplines, between different programs within the same discipline, and even between different programs at a given institution. Most programs do want students they admit to succeed, and generally the qualifying exam isn’t presented as a huge ‘sink-or-swim’ obstacle. However, some programs (such as MIT MechE) are notorious for using the qualifying exam as a way of weeding ‘underperforming’ students out; such programs may have very low pass rates.</p>
<p>Humanities, social sciences, hard sciences…in what universe is an A-minus is a bad grade?</p>
<p>Are there some fields so ridiculously grade inflated that nothing less than 4.0 is sufficient?</p>
<p>Just as a quick note: I got my undergrad from one school, my masters from another, and will be getting my PhD at a third (all electrical engineering). My MS grades came up during the admissions process, and notably kept me from qualifying from a fellowship - my MS was part time, and my grades suffered from my course schedule and from making my work my #1 priority. My point being that your master’s grades DO count when applying for the PhD.</p>
<p>On the quals issue, the two schools to which I was accepted offer 2 chances at the exams, a semester apart. After that, thank you and goodbye - you are done at that school, and your odds of getting in elsewhere at the same level has just dropped.</p>