<p>First it varies from professor to professor. At most schools they must spell out their grading policy in the syllabus in precise language so that there is little confusion. If it's not in the syllabus that opens them up to students challenging grades through formal channels within the university (look up grade appeals in your course bulletin)</p>
<p>Second, calm the **** down...it's one grade, and you did well on the first exams. You can probably still get A's, but it's going to depend on the way each individual prof sets up their grading.</p>
<p>A true curve is a standard bell curve, in which the average grade in the class is set to a letter grade, usually C+ or B-, and then your relative position to that score determines your letter grade. If a professor truly breaks down grades using statistical methods, then your grade is based off of how many standard deviations away from the mean you are - but most don't do that b/c it takes a lot of work, and theoretically means that the same number of people get A's and F's. Most profs that do a true curve tend to look set the class average to a C+/B-, and then look for the natural breaks in the groupings of students scores and assign letter grades based on those.</p>
<p>A scale is what most people think of when they say curve or someone "broke the curve". In this case, the top person in the class has their score on an exam set to 100% and everyone else's score moves up by the same number of points as the top person's score did to reach 100%. So if you got a 60/100 on an exam and the top score was a 75, you end up with an 85. From there, grades are usually calculated on a standard conversion (A=90-100, B= 80-89, etc) but not always.</p>
<p>As for dropping grades...unless they said they did so in the syllabus, it's not likely.</p>
<p>Finally do you not understand how to calculate a gpa? Did you go to one of those schools where they give you a percent grade (like you got a 97 throughout all of HS or something?)</p>
<p>It's real simple: take the number of points you earned for the grade in the class (A=4.0), multiply by the number of credit hours for that course, then add all the numbers you get for all your courses and divide by your total number of graded credit hours. Look to your Universities specific GPA scale to determine how many points you get for a + or - grade. Some schools only have A,B,C,D,F scales, others throw in extra points for a + and some have the full gamut of + and - differences in points awarded.</p>