<p>better school, better teachers, better students, better grades</p>
<p>Thanks ambulatory: Just giving an honest assessment of what I’ve observed here (Emory) for 3 years and some of the research I’ve done (whether it’s been reading studies, looking at data, or even comparing course content across schools when possible)</p>
<p>xemailheather: Normally that only explains at best 1/2 of it. Also, places like Harvard apparently have lower teaching quality than some peers (or at least their students rate them in a manner that indicates so), public or private (perhaps elite, non-elite) and yet their grades sit higher than at least 1/2 of the top 20 schools. And I’ve notice that worse profs. may actually give higher grades, mainly because they don’t want to invest the additional time it would take to make a more challenging course. They often seek the mutual disengagement pact (“I won’t give you work or hard exams as long as you leave me alone and let me do my research”). Better teachers are often (or at least sometimes) more challenging and while they have pretty good “relative” success with relation to the level of the content or assignments, “good” often falls into lower grade ranges w/such profs. Like, in a challenging, but good science prof., a B-/B may actually be acceptable to most. But in less challenging courses w/worse profs., nothing below B+ (often A-) is viewed as acceptable (a bad prof. is also more likely to be blamed or pressured to change or defend a grade also). So it’s much more complex than that, as I’ve tried to explain.<br>
Your theory would have to concede that many/most of the schools that rank below Princeton, Johns Hopkins, and MIT are in reality, significantly better institutions because their grades are higher. You would have to concede that Stanford, Yale and Brown are superior to Harvard (and Harvard superior to MIT) as indicated by the fact that they have higher grades. The logic doesn’t make sense.<br>
(hopefully, this space makes people happy 
)
It’s best to look at it from the individual institutional level and determine the format of classes at said institutions, difficulty of course content (finding syllabi, exams, and p-sets is most useful as I find that students at many elite schools tend to over-exaggerate difficulty of the coursework. given this, hearsay doesn’t work. Actual coursework or presentations of coursework to be done are more indicative. I’ve found that, for example, organic chemistry sequences at most elite institutions is nowhere near as bad as many students make it out to be. Some make it ridiculously easier than others. Most introductory science courses are not that hard either when you remove MIT and Caltech), and whether there are de facto grading guidelines (this actually tells a lot. Take a look at this, Williams does not seem as hard as many students try to claim it is. In fact, it’s GPA indicates it is probably only as hard as we are as I don’t find their student body particularly superior to ours to justify a difference that should be there if they were indeed “grade deflated” as some of them like to claim. We both have a 1400ish-1420 or slightly higher average among enrolled students: [Across</a> divisions, average grades continue incremental increase : The Williams Record](<a href=“The Williams Record – The Student-Run Newspaper of Williams College Since 1887”>The Williams Record – The Student-Run Newspaper of Williams College Since 1887)) at particular institutions, and then make comparisons between institutions. With that said, it is very difficult to do. And after all is said and done, you realize that often it is hardly a matter of student and teacher quality, more so than how an institution (or various profs. w/in) is choosing to grade at the time. Are they choosing to set “benchmarks” like Williams and Princeton or do profs. do like some at Harvard and look at the current average and assign grades accordingly? Basically, the grade in this case is not really used to individually assess the student in these cases (and thus not really measuring the quality of the student being assessed or their own teaching), at least not completely. They are looking at variations in quality and then choosing to distribute grades versus standards that many would admit are not their own (again, Harvey Mansfield case).</p>
<p>If you look at the elites, there is a good deal of variability in grading averages. At a place like Brown somewhere around two thirds of all letter grades are A. At a place like MIT that number is around two fifths. Are Brown students much better than those at MIT? No. It’s just local custom. A professor, after a few years, figures out that local custom and tends to grade accordingly.</p>
<p>Over time, customs change and grading standards relax. Are students at Brown today vastly superior to those from the 1980s or 1990s? No. Yet Brown’s grades have gone up dramatically. As Stanford/Princeton admissions dean Fred H. used to say, whether there are 15,000 applicants or 30,000 applicants, the students selected are essentially all the same. You just get more multiples of the same kind of applicant. There is a common mindset on these campuses that “we’re all so much better, students and faculty, than those before us” that has no basis in reality and is just ego-driven nonsense. Just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you’re not capable of delusion.</p>
<p>There are former “safety” schools that have, over the last 20 to 30 years, risen to elite status (because there are many more students who want to go to elite colleges and SHYMP/Ivy slots have not increased). These new kids on the block schools - Washington, Emory, Vandy, etc. - do get, on average significantly better students than they once did. Their grades have (probably) gone up faster than those of the SHYMP/Ivy schools through a mix of local custom, better students and grade inflation.</p>
<p>You are definitely right about that: The better than last mentality. Even the newer elites do it now.</p>
<p>Is it really surprising that grading standards lax when people at elite colleges make statements like in this article?: [Vanderbilt</a> Class of 2015: Better than the last class?again | InsideVandy](<a href=“Inside Vandy: Vanderbilt University's student news source”>Inside Vandy: Vanderbilt University's student news source)</p>
<p>Seriously, the value of the degree suddenly goes up because the SAT scores of the “admitted” students increased a little over last years’? Mind you, schools like USC, Vandy and Brown (perhaps many more) that admit that high usually “yield” classes that have a 25% that fall 50-70 points off the admitted student number. I mean, we normally don’t talk about our specific stats. here until all students are “enrolled”(basically when the smoke clears). We aren’t ashamed to announce modest increases or decreases (and neither was Williams).The only thing they release is the number of applications (which has been a concern starting in 2009 because of the slight decline, partly due to no longer accepting partially complete applications, meaning that we had. some app. inflation. So when I applied the, 17.5k was not a real number. It was somewhere in the 15k range) .And then we just mention that we are excited to welcome and how they are indeed a well-qualified class, but no one says that the value of an Emory degree increases because of it. For that to happen, we need some nobel prize winners graduating from here (thus perhaps more PhD oriented students) or on staff, harder courses, more awesome teachers (no I don’t mean prize winners, I mean legit great profs. that care about engaging undergrads) or better yet an engineering school (that way, some students can literally have a more higher paying degree than what some would get in the past). We can yield students w/great scores all we want, but that won’t make the degree worth more. That’s just idiocy. It also tells the incoming class that they are worth more because their scores are a little(and only a little) higher than the last. If that won’t contribute to entitlement/unwarranted ego boost I don’t what does. They should have simply said, “the class is good, and we can’t wait to welcome some of them to the campus in the fall”, but no.</p>
<p>I think we have a more conservative, less risky approach to admissions (for good reason, our yield is only 28-30%). They admit really high (and higher each year) banking on more students on the higher end to matriculate. We may or may not admit modestly higher, and thus get about the same caliber class we admitted. Releasing admitted stats. almost seems like a scare tactic to discourage certain students from applying the upcoming season, perhaps moving toward only having higher end applicants apply, however, the admit rate indicates that it doesn’t really work and that no matter how many apps. they get, they essentially get the same student as last year (maybe 10 points higher on SATs than last year, but that will hardly result in higher performance or more prize winners).</p>
<p>It becomes easy to see how selectivity (or rate of change in) and admissions can play a part in expected grading practices.</p>
<p>bernie12, seems you have some good ideas, but until it’s formatted, I can’t help but think: </p>
<p>tl;dr</p>
<p>if that was an emoticon, it failed lol. </p>
<p>Rejoiced that I used “enter” in the last few . I’m sure that my transition is slowly making the world happier lol.</p>
<p>Observations from my recent experience at a mid-size Canadian public U:</p>
<p>1)Large lower-division classes (100-200 level) tend to be graded on a curve (‘scaled’), with the mean set at around C or C+. There are only so many A’s to award, and only the top students (relative to others) will be awarded an A, regardless of actual performance. Top grades were definitely difficult to obtain and competition was strong. Professors admitted as much.</p>
<p>2)In many of the smaller seminar classes (300-400 level), grades were awarded on merit. Some professors graded extremely hard, others easier. Grading wasn’t as structured or policy-based as with lower-division classes. There were few ‘easy’ A’s; profs weren’t afraid to give a low or failing grade if that’s what you deserved, even profs with whom you’d received high grades from in the past.</p>
<p>In general, students could try and cherry-pick, but there were no guarantees once you were enrolled. You generally had to work for it; I worked hard but received some letter grades far lower than my actual percentage grades based on scaled grading and the expectations of demanding profs.</p>
<p>Don’t know if someone has brought this up or not:</p>
<p>Why on earth should a C/2.0 be “average”? The lowest gpa cutoff I have seen for any job application is 2.75 (and I’d wager that about 90% of the job listings I’ve seen mention gpa requirements).</p>
<p>So basically anyone arguing that colleges should start deflating grades is saying that in these situations, more than half of college grads shouldn’t be allowed to even apply to most jobs? That’s absurd.</p>
<p>(One could argue that companies should thus lower their standards, but that’s an entirely different argument).</p>
<p>*Note- this is from an engineering perspective.</p>
<p>
Historical reasons aside, it makes sense to curve grades around the center of the grade range. This way there’s space to distinguish among the top students. Currently, the top third or top half all fall into the same letter grade.</p>
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<p>It shouldn’t, if the school requires that as a minimum to maintain good academic standing (which many do). Most schools don’t want to have that many students fail out.</p>
<p>However, one would expect that if the grades mean what they historically meant (A = outstanding, B = good, C = solidly passing, D = barely passing, F = fail), then most grades would be C grades, with some B grades and a few A grades (and a few D and F grades for those who did not learn the material enough to use it in the next course). Not mostly A grades, with some B grades and a few C grades.</p>
<p>Schools that have +/- should have averages that fall between C+/B- by that logic as those grades fall at the center of the scale. While this may be low now-a-days, I don’t know why B-/B (where B=anything from 3.0-3.25, not hitting or exceeding B+) average for a course is too much to ask now. With that, there can be plenty of solid grades w/o awarding A grades to those didn’t meet the requirements completely (you know, in such classes, you probably need to merely meet the requirements better than everyone else. You don’t have to do particularly good quality work. One of my profs. in a history course made it clear that even they mark on some type of de facto curve, albeit a soft one only using 2-3 grade ranges). Why do most courses outside of the sciences and math oriented courses have to yield around a B+ or greater. </p>
<p>Again, “subjectivity” and “our students just write really well and are just so motivated” does not really explain it. Again marking at about a B- or B average (maybe a little higher) seems fair and indicates somewhat high standards. You can give a reasonable range of grades that are close reflecting the actual variation in quality of the work without having to give a D/F (especially in the case of a smaller course) or perhaps too many Cs, but w/o giving As to many people that probably shouldn’t have one if the course supposedly has rigorous standards. Also, note that often median grades lie above averages. </p>
<p>Emory’s summer general chemistry displayed this nicely. On one exam, the mean was 66, but the median was at 73, the difference between a solid D (almost D+) and a solid C. With this said, in a humanities/social science course averaging 2.8-3.2(I’m thinking more like 3.15), plenty, in fact almost half of the class will walk away with solid grades (B/B+).Our business school employs such logic for core classes (electives are curved to a max of 3.3 and no higher):
[Goizueta</a> Business School - Undergraduate BBA](<a href=“http://www.goizueta.emory.edu/degree/undergra_cur_grades.html]Goizueta”>http://www.goizueta.emory.edu/degree/undergra_cur_grades.html)</p>
<p>For cores:
I have calculated (I once did this for one of my friends in the B-school that constantly complains. The reality is, it’s not tough at all despite all of their constant complaints about the curve) what happens if you assign an equal amount of A/A-s and if you minimize the amount of B-s, while still meeting the 45% cutoff for B grades all the while awarding all 20% of the students falling at C or below a C+ (basically I somewhat optimize). You get about 3.17. There are other ways to arrange the As that yield similar results (I got one that yielded 3.14 for example). These are reasonable averages that result in 80% of the class receiving a B grade or higher and over 1/3 receiving an A grade. That seems like a winning situation. What’s kind of shameful is that they need a grade distribution/curve to yield even these generous results. Is it really that hard to design a course difficult enough or to set standards high enough to yield this? Such a distribution in a class of 30 simply dictates that 5 students receive a C+ (I’m sure that despite our awesomeness at medium and highly selective schools, there are still some, if not plenty of students that perform at C-level with regards to what is expected in college). As long as expectations were made clear at the beginning, not much squabbling should occur when the 5 students that did sub-par work receive Cs. The only thing scary about the B-School is that some classes are so easy, that peoples grades end up curved downward from what they would be on a normal Emory scale. There are so many really high scores on some exams that 96-97 may yield an A-. That shouldn’t be the case. If a course was at least moderately challenging, the distribution should be able to be achieved when grades are applied vs. the normal scale or perhaps raised a little.</p>
<p>^ Jesus F#c*i@g Christ. </p>
<p>Someone has way too much time on their hands.</p>
<p>Perhaps, I was/am bored. Or when I did those calculations (out of interest, trying to prove a point to my friend that B-school grades are still inflated), my classes were much easier than expected (I did it last semester, not just now; I have pretty solid memory, and many of my classes were indeed easier than expected). I also have so much time on my hands that I’m prepping (reading lots of chem. papers) to finish up my chemistry research project that I have to start back up when I get back. So yes, I do. My head is currently stuck in various facets of academia. At least July 4 and last weekend was fun ;).</p>
<p>Anyway, I’m liberal"ish"- I’m about to watch Bill Maher. Peace out.</p>
<p>Students will always contest a mark in a subjective course but take any of the STEM courses. If it’s wrong, then it’s wrong. If the answer is 5 and there is a series of steps that should be shown and the student makes a mistake, then he or she is wrong. I also find that students complain less on multiple choice tests because if it’s wrong it’s wrong. There’s no grey area. So are we heading towards a future similar to China’s education system? Perhaps.</p>
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<p>tl;dr means too long, didn’t read.</p>
<p>Nobody wants to read big walls of text.</p>
<p>Yea the grades are inflated now but it just changes the way people interpret GPA’s. Maybe a few decades ago the difference between a 3.0 and a 4.0 student are now like the difference between a 3.6 and a 4.0 student. Its a pretty dumb game the premed kids play. Crying in the corner because their GPA drops .01 points… lol</p>
<p>Well yes I believe there is grade inflation a lot of times, and my definition of that is when you have a curve, and the teacher normalizes to give most people Bs or B+s with a lot of As. The other side of this though is my opinion that students collaborate more nowadays and reach very high to get the top score. Many times in classes where I would think back in the day there would be a curve, people are scoring 98s on exams in organic chemistry, working hard to obtain a lot of old tests on top of studying hard. In these cases the professor can’t do anything when the university standard for an A is 90% or above, at my school, and I believe a lot of schools, the professor cannot raise the course standard, only lower it. Also with grade distribution information becoming public, students can hand-pick so-called easy classes with high distributions, to buffer their GPAs, or give them a break to focus on the harder classes while being in a full course load, thus acing their couple of pre-meds that semester. I truly believe some teachers curve up pretty high, but I think the information age, competitiveness and standards for high end jobs / professional / graduate school admissions, the internet, and all the resources students are given contribute higher to grades going up than inflation. If we really want to further separate grades, we COULD hand out more Cs and what not, but when a student is scoring so well, they don’t deserve it. A lot of people say Harvard is inflated, but Harvard has standards, I heard one of the English classes only gives out 1 A grade (earned by recent 4.0 grad from Harvard). Also just because that person graduated with a 4.0, when I saw her diploma she did NOT graduate with top honors, which blew my mind. It said “cum laude” on her diploma. Now this really doesn’t have to do with grades per say, but it still attributes to schools having high scholarly requirements, thus a good thesis would need to be written to bring “summa cum laude” into possibility. Also at Washington University in St. Louis, I was about to apply there for graduate school, what I noticed is that the GPA requirement to graduate was MUCH lower than most of the schools I saw. It requires about a 2.5-2.7 to graduate, whereas most grad school require a minimum of 3.0, that told me maybe they make the courses a bit harder, and thus have the lower grade requirement. Well in conclusion I think that most of the lower division courses do NOT show grade inflation, as they typically fail many people and the grades end up being a 1.8-2.0 average even for courses that require a few pre-reqs, whereas upper level courses students can more hand-pick them, and I have found them to be very easy, with high grades given out by professors. When my dad attended Purdue, he said that the physics class there for freshman was harder than his entire engineering degree, this to me made sense. A lot of times these lower division courses have a lot of changed exams, low grading curve, and almost a disciplinary sense by the instructor.</p>
<p>As a rising junior in Hs, this is making me worry about the quality of my education. Yes, I have a 4.0 on a 4.0 UW scale, but perhaps that means less than it ever has… We had 16 Valedictorians last year…</p>
<p>Whoops I meant rising Senior*.</p>
<p>achris: Lower grade requirements (WashU) probably may mean it’s a little harder, but it’s more useful for evaluation. Schools w/3.0 tend to hand out Bs and aren’t really able to evaluate course progress “for real”. Also, a more ulterior motive may be “we want to make sure we keep the money (assuming that particular program isn’t paying the student as some/many are free), can’t have anyone fail out”. There are ways to achieve a 2.5-2.7 average w/o giving much D/F grades trust me. There will be some Cs however. </p>
<p>Also, Harvard students are nowhere near perfect. They are capable of failing as much as students at other elite institutions: I’m using one of their advanced level organic chem. courses to understand my research and prep. for my organometallic course (will be brutal. My brutal gen. orgo. prof is teaching it. He’s good and I’m willing to tolerate punishment) and I came across some exams (challenging by the way) w/solutions. They listed the average on the exams. Look at this:
<a href=“https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B456FmeCw42BMzIzYmNkZDktMGJmNC00NDRiLTkyOTAtODkzMGM0Y2E0MmMz&hl=en_US[/url]”>https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0B456FmeCw42BMzIzYmNkZDktMGJmNC00NDRiLTkyOTAtODkzMGM0Y2E0MmMz&hl=en_US</a>
Question is, where is the curve set (as in where will the average be set)? No exam had higher than 60 something average that semester. In this case, many students can be safely given Cs (If the average was low 60/high 50, I would curve to C+). Whether this happens or not is only my guess. </p>
<p>Anyway, organic chem professors at Emory generally make it difficult enough so only 5-10% get between say 90-100. Trust me, when the smoke clears and the average revealed, more people could have been given a C.</p>