<p>I hear stories of notorious teachers and what not.</p>
<p>Please tell me generally how hard the grading system is, and how hard it is to get A or A+ at columbia</p>
<p>THanks</p>
<p>And while we're at it, is Columbia like most schols on a plus/minus scale? That is, is GPA capped at 4.0? Can an A+ 4.33 bring up a cumulative average to a 4.0 even if there's been an A- somewhere?</p>
<p>yes, according to their viewbook</p>
<p>Are there A+'s at Columbia?</p>
<p>I don't know about everything but this is what is like for intro bio:</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
The mean letter grade in this course is expected to be the same as in previous years, a low B.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Yes, there are A's at Columbia. Many many.
C</p>
<p>good. i am less scared now. :P</p>
<p>A+ is a 4.33; however, I think it is rather tough to get that in humanities courses - but more common in math/science classes.</p>
<p>You can get above a 4.0 GPA... for the 2nd semester, I have an A-, an A and two A+'s (still waiting on the 5th grade) and my current GPA is listed as 4.08 or so.</p>
<p>A+ is nearly impossible to get in humanities classes. All the people with above 4.0 averages that I know (only like 3 people, so it's hardly statistically significant) are math majors or SEAS students.</p>
<p>Doesn't Columbia also have valedictorians? I've never really heard of that for a college, but apparently they do(?) How does that work anyway...wouldn't math/science majors have a huge advantage?</p>
<p>they have magna cum laude and summa cum laude. if you want to get an A at Columbia you need to work pretty hard, but it's not that hard to get a B or B+...A+ is a very rare grade - only about 3 kids in a class of 100 or 150 can get it.</p>
<p>My observation is also that Columbia students work pretty hard for their As -- very hard in some of the science and math classes, especially -- even though the median in many classes may be set at a B. Columbia makes up for this to some extent by listing on the transcript what the median was and how many students in the class got As, so someone taking a close look can evaluate how difficult the classes were.</p>
<p>What IS more difficult at Columbia than some of the other Ivies is to graduate with honors, since that is capped at a certain percentage of the class. This is from a story in Dartmouth Review a few years back:</p>
<p>"Apparently, in its Class of 2001, 91 percent of Harvard graduates received the distinction of honors. At the other Ivy League schools, the number is much lower: Dartmouth, 40 percent; Yale, 51 percent; Princeton, 44 percent; Brown, 42 percent; Columbia, 25 percent; and Cornell, 8 percent. The University of Pennsylvania does not release statistics because Penn administrators believe it would violate students privacy."</p>
<p>how does one get on the DEAN'S LIST?? what are the specific requirements/GPA?</p>
<p>I think it's 3.6</p>
<p>damn that means that the average gpa is probably around 3.0 ? is it really that hard to make deans list? and How many people are on it??</p>
<p>I think the average gpa is higher than a 3.0, at least in the college. Don't know about SEAS. As at most Ivies, there are not that many C's given out, especially in humanities.</p>
<p>I heard the average GPA at Columbia is 3.7</p>
<p>thats SHADY!</p>
<p>so I take it, professors use some form of a bell curve.</p>
<p>^ no more like, revenue at the expense of a real education.</p>