I’m an incoming Hoya this fall, and I was just curious about possible grade inflation/deflation here at Gtown, particularly in the economics/political economy dept. Does anyone know any curves/percentage breakdown of letter grades?
Also, which freshmen history course would you recommend for someone who just wants an easy way to complete the requirement?
As a student in the SFS forced to take four economics classes, I’d say it’s not really that hard. Granted, the highest I got in them were A minuses, but that was with having absolutely no idea what the professors were saying for the entire semester before cramming for a day. Now imagine if you’re majoring in it. You actually understand the stuff.
I’m really more of an A- person in general (though I do get As as well) because I work pretty hard but I don’t want to sacrifice going to see a movie or whatever to work just that little bit extra on an essay. My first draft of an essay is my final draft. I never go back to edit. By the time I’ve written 20 pages I’m so disgusted I can’t wait to click send.
So. I wouldn’t know about higher level economics though.
Grades are pretty massively inflated in the econ department, as about 40-45% of the class gets A’s or A-'s in every econ class. As the classes get more advanced, things do get a bit harder, but to be totally honest, a lot of not terribly bright people continue in econ just because they think it looks good and consistently drive down the curve. As an IPEC major, the political economy classes you have to take, particularly the ones cross listed with the government department, are the ones to be careful with, as grades in those classes are always incredibly high. This leads to ridiculous A restrictions, like for IR my freshman year, to get an A you needed a 95.7% and in IPEC you needed a 96.67% I believe.
For easy history classes, it matters almost entirely on the professor, but from what I hear, Jonathan Brown’s Islamic History is a good class and pretty easy. It’s also very popular though.