<p>I’m sure that if we tried we could find enough exceptions to break your rule of “grades measure knowledge (memorization skills)”.</p>
<p>Whatever happened to diligence?</p>
<p>I think a little bit of both. If you’re not good at a subject but if you can get an A, it shows that you put a lot of effort and were willing to do whatever it took to get an A which shows good work ethic. On the other hand, it can also demonstrate a mastery of the material (at least the ability to even if you’ve forgotten! haha) so I guess intelligence too.</p>
<p>If you can work for an A, that’s good.</p>
<p>I can get movies On Demand; the fact that I can’t get knowledge/mastery of a subject On Demand reveals a grave incompetence in our current education system.</p>
<p>I don’t think you can measure someone’s aptitude just by looking at grades and comparing it with effort. There are too many other factors: difficulty of classes in high school, parental influence/support, study habits, etc. Plus, I guarantee you don’t observe your friends 24/7, you don’t know their study habits completely, so you can’t draw conclusions about their aptitude.</p>
<p>^^ addressed to all posts claiming “X dude is smart because he never studies and has a 4.0 while Y dude is stupid because he studies all the time and has a 3.2”</p>
<p>sithis you can basically get information on demand: internet. however a thorough education requires much more effort to give than a single already produced copy of a movie, making a class on demand more difficult, though if you go to a large enough university you can take basically anything you can think of</p>
<p>I didn’t say “information” or “classes,” I said “knowledge/mastery of a subject.” Please take a middle-school reading comprehension class before responding to my clearly serious and in no way facetious posts.</p>
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<p>Don’t take this the wrong way, but that could simply indicate that your university’s academics aren’t stellar.</p>
<p>IMO, a highly committed student with average/slightly above average aptitude shouldn’t be getting a 4.0. It’s a sign of grade inflation or weak academics (ironically almost all colleges suffer from at least 1 of the two). </p>
<p>The whole idea that anyone except the most highly committed and highly apt students should be getting 3.5+ only hurts college students. It makes the college GPA worth less; a low GPA hurts you while a high GPA hardly helps you in later job searches. </p>
<p>Instead, the average GPA at colleges should be a 2.0. It wouldn’t affect the average student at all (employers would now know that 2.0/4.0 is average and would view it the same as they view ~3.0/4.0 today), but it would allow top students to really excel.</p>
<p>It would also allow professors to really weed out top students, so we wouldn’t have to debate whether a GPA measures “intelligence or commitment/work ethic.” It’d measure both, or you wouldn’t get an A.</p>
<p>I’ve said this before, but IMO there’s 4 grade points in the school system. We really only use 2. A 1.0 or lower should be assigned to the bottom 15-20% within a college, not just to the dimwit that completely bombed college.</p>
<p>I have a 4.0, you have a 4.0, we all have a damn 4.0. College is the new high school.</p>
<p>Re 68</p>
<p>I graduated from Georgia Tech, which has had mild grade inflation in the past two decades or so but still maintains its reputation for being a difficult school. Keep in mind that my five data points were based on my first-semester alone. I know that 3 & 4’s GPAs have dropped since then due to motivation problems. They used to be near the top of the curve, but now they’re in the middle.</p>
<p>@justtotalk: Speak for yourself. My GPA is a 2.8, and lots of people in my program have lower GPA’s. My classes are curved so a significant chunk always will get C’s, D’s and F’s and it sucks because those are considered bad grades but someone’s got to get them. But my GPA used to be a 3.5, I had one really bad semester. The average GPA in my program is a 3.0 and that’s considered pretty good. A B- or C+ is curved as average in classes, not a B. </p>
<p>And I disagree with you entirely; the bell curve sucks. It creates a situation where students are competing against each other ridiculously because only a set % can get A’s and B’s. But people look down on GPA’s under 3.0 and assume the person is an idiot. Everytime I apply for a job they want at least a 3.0, sometimes even a 3.3 or higher.</p>
<p>And I would say grades/GPA measures intelligence and work ethic. I don’t know what “obedience” has to do with anything. Grades depend mostly on the Midterm and Final and if you don’t do well on those, you’re screwed.</p>
<p>The thing is, depending on the kind of work you do - your GPA doesn’t matter much anyways. It’s only primarily useful to get into advanced programs and your first attempt to get into the workforce.</p>
<p>After your first job and you have experience under your belt, the GPA becomes irrelevant. Employers want to know that you are capable of doing the work, they don’t really care about GPA’s.</p>
<p>Now, before I start getting incoming fire about all the exceptions to my statement - I understand. I know some fields use GPA as a major factor, but generally, GPA becomes less meaningful with the more work experience and training you acquire.`</p>
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<p>That’s because there’s grade inflation in most college in the US. If the average GPA across the USA really became a 2.0, employers would adjust their standards. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, the real competition is being caused because good grades are so easy to get. A 3.0 is a necessity to get a good job nowadays, and so students are focusing on getting the grade instead of learning.</p>
<p>If you had a curve centered on 2.0 (ex. 10% F, 20% D, 30% C, 20% B/BC, 10% A/AB) in ALL classes with a reasonable sample size, then you’d have a final GPA average of around 2.0. There’s very few classes that have a true bell curve center around 2.0, and I don’t know a single college that has non-intro classes with such a curve.</p>
<p>That kind of curve would probably allow <1% of students to get a 3.8+. Meanwhile, the average GPA is a 2.0, so employers wouldn’t look down on the 2.0 student. It wouldn’t make college any more or less difficult–you would simply be able to weed out the top students because you’d be using all 4 grade points instead of only the top 2. </p>
<p>Your 2.8 GPA would probably be about a 1.0–> it’d be irrelevant to you, because a 2.8 today would look the same as a 1.0 to an employer under the new standards. It would only affect top students getting 3.9-4.0 that haven’t had a chance to differentiate themselves.</p>
<p>People would start learning to learn if the GPA distribution was like this–because no matter how much you studied you couldn’t get an A without amazing aptitude and work ethic. There wouldn’t be this perfectionist mentality anymore.</p>
<p>It would also ensure that students seek the best professors that they can learn the most from–because all classes end up getting the same grade distribution. No such thing as a “hard” or “easy” class anymore. The history majors can finally say that their 4.0 GPA really IS equally impressive as the engineer’s 4.0 GPA (sort of–unless engineers are better at engineering than history majors are at history)</p>
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<p>IMO, part of the reason employers don’t care too much about GPA’s is because they aren’t meaningful. They don’t separate the stellar students who can learn quickly on the job. These days, a solid GPA is only useful with internship and experience, because GPA’s don’t guarantee that you can learn on the job.</p>
<p>It’s the inherent flaw in GPA inflation.</p>
<p>Yes, it’s also true that GPA and future work performance aren’t perfectly correlated. But at least an employer would know the difference between a student in the top 20% of his class and a student in the top 1%.</p>
<p>These days, the difference between the top 10% and top 1% can be due to a couple lousy professors.</p>
<p>Well, if a person has a history of successful work experience, but a low GPA, the GPA shouldn’t really matter.</p>
<p>If they’ve shown they are really good at the job, what does a GPA from 10, 15, 20 years ago really matter?</p>
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<p>It doesn’t. But why not maximize the usefulness of a GPA by at least using all 4 grade points? A top student won’t necessarily be a top worker, but at least you’ll know who the top students are.</p>
<p>Being a test-taking and homework-completing God doesn’t mean you’re cut out for the workforce, I grant you that. But give employers as much information as possible about you.</p>
<p>Grouping all students around the 3.0-3.5 mark just creates a useless cluster****.</p>
<p>BTW, I just considered this, the cluster of 3.0-3.5 GPA’s is also allowing the college tuition bubble to continue. Since so many students get very similar GPA’s, many students choose to chase the prestige (picking Yale over their cheaper state school)–because a 3.5 at Yale is better than a 4.0 at a state school for landing that first job.</p>
<p>If the grading policies became consistently harsh across the country, then students would know that a high GPA at a state school wouldn’t be dismissed even when compared to a solid GPA from a more prestigious school. Many top high schoolers would have an incentive to chase scholarships over USNWR rankings, and the public school education system would improve as better students entered into it. </p>
<p>This, in turn, would start to even out the playing field between the super elite colleges and the other tier 1 schools, and there would be a downward pressure on prices across the board to attract top students. Students would no longer care about the name on the degree; they’d care about the education provided relative to its cost. The stringent grading policies would take care of the prestige aspect.</p>
<p>Finally, the education system would be subject to some fiscal accountability.</p>
<p>Students at the first college to implement such a grading system would have, if it managed to get enough press that employers were in the know, such an advantage in job placement.</p>
<p>justtotalk - Some good points. Prestige on your resume does play a factor, but those schools are given preference by top employers because of the faculty and environment. Stricter grading criteria may not be able to change that. It’s a pretty tough cycle to break. </p>
<p>For example: Yale will always be more expensive than UConn because top students with an interest in Chemistry will want to work with people like Dr. Steitz (2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry winner/Yale Prof). Yale in turn attracts the top faculty who want a big fat budget for their research efforts because their endowment and research budget tower over public institutions. Companies like Dupont want people who have been trained by the top Chemistry minds working on their next version of Teflon, etc ,etc.</p>
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<p>Maybe you’re right–but I feel like the attraction of an undergrad to a particular university isn’t because of a particular professor; that sounds more like grad school admissions. </p>
<p>If a state school was able to convince a top student in their state that, due to the new grading policies, a professor didn’t need to “dumb down” his lectures, assignments, and tests so that 60% of the class can get a B, the student might be very interested in a $8-15k/yr tuition rate instead of 30-35k/yr. </p>
<p>With a few very unique exceptions, most undergrads aren’t worried that their state school professors aren’t smart enough or can’t provide them with an intellectually rigorous experience; they’re worried that their peers aren’t smart enough and they’re worried that they won’t be able to reach their potential at a mediocre school. Some also worry about what employers will think.</p>
<p>Once the “mediocre” school can give them the a prestige via a high GPA, and the professors are free to teach at a higher level, in-state students should flock to the publics IMO. Keep in mind that some tier 1 schools that can’t reach the tip top in USNWR still have some of the best researchers in the country–they simply don’t have consistently great undergrad students. I go to UW-Madison, and it seems like a prime example.</p>
<p>If given the chance to weed out the top students, many professors could meet the challenge of providing a great education. Any undergrad can tell you that some of the best lecturers aren’t tenured professors–the undergrad education level isn’t so high that academics couldn’t keep up with good students or their extracurricular needs.</p>
<p>There’s only so many great students, and if there’s 100 universities that can intrigue them instead of 12 or 20, then competition should bring prices down. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s stretch to imagine that if better students started attending more public universities, then companies–particularly those deal with fresh college grads a lot–would adapt their standards and start recruiting at more schools.</p>
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<p>Well, in my book, my point would have to stand in order for BIGeastBEAST’s statement to be entirely true; as I indicated, I do agree with the statement, but conditionally.</p>