<p>What does grading on a curve in college mean? How is it from grading in high school? Does it mean its impossible to get an 'A' in some classes?</p>
<p>no.</p>
<p>Lets say the class average is 45. The teacher will raise the grade to save his own ass.</p>
<p>In my programming class I got almost all 50's. But I ended the class with a C+.</p>
<p>because everybody else also did so bad.</p>
<p>No, it just means it's impossible to get an A if your class is much better than you.</p>
<p>For my intro classes at University of Michigan, it was curved on a B-, meaning half the class got a B- or above and half got a C+ or below, for a class average of 2.5. Thus: A's are very hard to get.</p>
<p>Likewise, it can hurt your grade like this: if you make a 90 you may think you did well. But if 70% of the class made a 95, you are probably going to get around a low C or a D.</p>
<p>What?? I thought 90 was a 'A'? How is this curve FAIR? If you did well on all the test , but the class did better than you , you get a bad grade? Whats the point of this?</p>
<p>not all classes curve like that. I've never (in all four years of college) had a course where a grade was curved down.</p>
<p>College isn't about being "fair". This isn't high school -- we can't all be above average.</p>
<p>Most of the science classes at my school are similar to what MatthewM04 describes.</p>
<p>It seems unfair, but kind of fair.</p>
<p>::College isn't about being "fair". This isn't high school -- we can't all be above average.::</p>
<p>So you're saying a five percent difference in a grade on a test should make you have a C instead of an A? I'm sorry, but that in no way is fair. Doing such a curve would simply be a professor's way of compensating for his inability to make good tests. I understand not everyone will be above average, but it would be absurd to grade a 90% down to a C in any instance. Only a very bad professor would ever do that. Instead, the test should simply be made hard enough so the average student gets a C.</p>
<p>Basically the point of curving is that at these top universities where you have kids who were straight A valedictorian 1600 SATs that now they have to make B's, C's, D's, and some will even fail. That's how it goes. And when you go from being a big fish in a small pond to a little guppy in the ocean, it can be quite a transition. Just deal with it.</p>
<p>I understand the point of a curve. However, artificially lowering one's grade is somewhat unfair. Ideally, a professor should be able to create a bell curve grade distribution just by adjusting the difficulty of the course. Using a curve simply compensates for a professor's inability to do so.</p>
<p>yeah, that's how our classes were. the average grade was always a C, but only because that's just how hard the course was. if everyone managed to get an A, then everyone got an A.. but that very rarely happened.</p>
<p>curves are actually a good thing, b/c profs make exams extremely hard... i got like 40% on one exam and avged 50% in the course and ended up with a B-</p>
<p>Maybe I'm being naive, but if the majority of the class is getting 90% on tests, couldn't that also mean that the professor is really good at teaching?</p>
<p>It's all relative, but I have never seen where above 90% wasn't an 'A.' The point of curving is to reward, not punish.</p>
<p>Curves may be good, may be bad. All they do is make sure there is an unnaturally wide distribution of grades.</p>
<p>First of all, from my experience unless you go to a crappy school, it is nearly impossible to get an average of 90 on all your classes. Maybe one or two but not all. Second, yes if you did manage to get an 90+ for your average then most likely you will get an 'A' because that would rank you probably top 10% of the class. THird, most people average around 40-70 range for their average and professors do curve it because they can't fail everyone. Basically, it doesn't matter what you get, it's all about how well you do relative to your peers, just like any other standardized test (ie SAT). Fourth, rarely to curve hurt anyone cause most people will receive an average in the failing range. Fifth, if you did manage to get a high grade like somewhere in the 80's and still get a 'D' then too bad. Cause, if 90% of the class gets 90+ on the test then it means the test is very very very very very easy, and by you getting only in the 80's indicates to the professor you know crap. Cause if the test was hard than you would probably fail in the first place. So, yeah I had this one professor who gives negative grades!!!!! but luckily for the final grade, a F is the lowest it goes.</p>
<p>How would one go about getting a negative grade? Would a blank exam count as a zero?</p>
<p>Most of the time doesn't CURVING help? Let's be honest here, the easy *** test went away in high school. If the whole class gets in the 40-70 range then doesn't that mean that an A is a 70; B is a 60 or whatever the calculation is. The thing that ****es me off is I keep hearing that a teacher can give only 3 A's per class. That's the real garbage. What if four people get the highest grade in the class, say 92's. How does he decide which 3 get A's and which one gets a B+? Poor old Bobby Williams gets a B+ because he's at the bottom of the alphabet.</p>
<p>The 90% figure I used in my first post was more of a hypothetical argument. However, similar circumstances have happened in physics lab (thus no exams except a final) at UM, where grading is based on class rank. If you screw up bad on one experiment, you just dropped yourself about 1-3 letter grades.</p>