haas curve... berkeley curve?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
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<p>so this year there was a "strictly enforced" curve up at haas at the graduate and undergraduate levels. </p>

<p>the imposed curve lasted all but half a semester thanks to the riots of the students to the teachers and hence the teachers to the "deciders" and now we have some kind of pseudo-curve going on where the teachers choose the distribution as long as they "hit" the prescribed mean gpa (3.2)</p>

<p>(think instead of a bell curve, a double humped curve with peaks at A's and C's)</p>

<p>anyway, notwithstanding the foregoing, how would you feel about a Berkeley-wide curve? across every major? implying the mean GPA of historically "tough majors" and historically "easy majors" would be the forced to be the same?</p>

<p>I ask mainly because of this post (<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13342811-post11.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/13342811-post11.html&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p>

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...
Based on most recent (typically graduation) major, especially high majors in year 1 were: business (3.62), computer science (3.38), history (3.34), philosophy (3.34), psychology (3.33), interdisciplinary studies (3.33). Especially low majors in year 1 were: social welfare (2.89), legal studies (2.92), natural resources (2.96), math and statistics (2.96), ethnic studies and area studies (3.02), architecture (3.06). Engineering (3.15) and physical sciences (3.22) were close to average.

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<p>anyway, just want to know how the CC forum would take this hypothetical if it were real policy. just to pass the time...</p>

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<p>crow, I saw you the other day all by yourself at haas. less time on cc would be better for your wellbeing, yeah?</p>

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<p>^ LOL OWNED</p>

<p>So things at HAAS now are pretty chill now that there’s no more curve?</p>

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<p>Some majors may attract “high GPA” or “low GPA” students more than others, and it is not always obvious (particularly for uncapped L&S majors) whether differences in by-major GPA are due to that or to actual grading policies (that are actually followed, unlike the old EECS LD 2.7 / UD 2.9 policy that is not actually being followed).</p>

<p>A campus-wide common curve policy that included upper division courses would lower the GPAs of declared business majors, since the business major is highly competitive for admissions (those graduating as business majors had an average 3.62 GPA as freshmen as noted above).</p>

<p>Business majors would probably favor a policy that said that each department should curve upper division courses to a GPA reflective of the lower division prerequisite course GPA of students majoring in that department’s major (e.g. declared business majors’ GPA in the seven prerequisite course becomes the GPA target for upper division business courses’ grading curves). Students in majors that attract low GPA students would probably oppose such a policy.</p>