<p>It really depends on what classes you take at Texas…some are really easy, some are difficult. It will depend on the professor, because they don’t HAVE to give you a grade just because you get a 94. You can get an A in some classes with averages in the 30s or 40s because they are that difficult, and if you take an easy class or never go to class you could get a 95 and get a B. It’s all up to the prof.</p>
<p>I haven’t meet one person that likes the new grading system. The only people that I can see liking it are the students that normally get B’s. They still don’t have to put in anymore effort and yet their gpa will go up. Doesn’t really seem fair to me. </p>
<p>As someone who consistently gets low A’s, I’m a little worried about what is going to happen to my gpa.</p>
<p>But, like loneranger said, it is up to the professor. College is not like highschool, where the number is the number and you can look at the grade book and see exactly what your grade is. </p>
<p>In many cases, grades are curved at the end of the semester and you don’t really know what your grade is going to be until it is posted. </p>
<p>Also, as I said in my other post, my oldest who’s been at UF, where they have the +/- system has NEVER gotten an A-. Maybe it is because professors are loathe to give less than a 4.0 for an A grade, and it is up to their discretion to post to the registrar as an A or an A-.</p>
<p>I’m wondering how this will affect internal transfers or scholarships which require a certain gpa to be maintained. Unless the intent is to limit the number of internal transfers or number of students who can maintain their scholarships, the minimum gpas required will need to change. Either that or UT has decided that students are underperforming and will work harder because of this new rule, or UT anticipates that gpas will remain about the same because profs will adjust their scales accordingly.</p>
<p>Well, apparently the reason they changed is because out of all of our ‘peer’ schools, we’re one of two schools out of say, 14 or so that doesn’t have +/- grading.</p>
<p>Not that it makes you feel any better, but Faculty Council implemented the ± grading system after both Senate and Student Government had said students didn’t want it. (Especially if you’re in Natural Sciences or Engineering!)</p>
<p>Darn this is lame. Is there any chance that we will return to the old system?</p>
<p>I sort of liked being able to shoot for that 89.5 instead of shooting for the 95. It’s a lot easier to get a 4.0 the old way.</p>
<p>This really irritates me. Getting a 94 in a class is a little ridiculous, especially in classes like Cal 3!! I usually get 90 & 91 or even 89.5. But now…they obviously won’t bump a 89.5 to an 4.0…</p>
<p>And a 2.67 for a B-??? LAME</p>
<p>When I first got to college I hated that it was just A, B, C, D. But since i’ve gotten used to it it makes me feel better about getting A’s. Now I’m just stressed! Now getting a 90 on a test will HURT me? *** ■■■</p>
<p>No there’s pretty much no chance of going back, considering they overruled student opinion the first time around and implemented it anyway.</p>
<p>Also, there is not a grandfathering clause for older students because that would ‘complicate things’ and make it confusing for other people reading transcripts, evidently.</p>
<p>I’d imagine it would depend a lot on the Prof, in the end. Most of my the more difficult classes were never graded on a straight 90-100= A style basis. Profs usually would set percentage cutoffs, top 25%=A, middle 50=B, bottom 25 = C, and they would calculate the grade averages from there. So I’d imagine they would do the same thing, except if they choose, have a little more variety in their cutoffs (10% = A, 20%= A- , etc). </p>
<p>Some classes would need to change their grading styles as a lot of them are styled (in Business School anyways) where its really easy to make a B, but if you make an A, its just because you barely made it over the 90 hump, nearly impossible to make 94+. </p>
<p>Again, it will be quite an adjustment the first semester as instructors figure out what exactly THEY want to do with the grading. The students will find themselves working harder as it it gives us the impression that it is MORE difficult to make an A. Maybe in reality it won’t be, depending on what adjustments the instructors deem appropriate, but it WILL affect the psyche of top students.</p>
<p>So does this mean that the system is retroactive - that is, if someone got a 90 in a past course and therefore got an A, will it now turn into an A- and lower their GPA?</p>
<p>Plus/Minus grading is new, optional (instructors may choose to use +/- or not), and prior semester grades will not be changed retroactively: [Spring</a> 10 | Registrar | University of Texas at Austin](<a href=“http://registrar.utexas.edu/schedules/102/index.html]Spring”>http://registrar.utexas.edu/schedules/102/index.html)</p>
<p>The +/- cutoffs were handed down to professors in August as departmental recommendations, but professors are free to tinker with the cutoffs or even ignore them altogether – the straight A/B/C/D grading system is still an option (but I don’t know if anyone is choosing that). The Chemistry department recommended using 2’s and 8’s as cutoffs</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>spdf - would a 92 be an A or an A-?</p>
<p>OH yeah, my bad. Sorry 'bout that. A 92 would be an A. The baselines for the grades are always real numbers, and the toplines are <.</p>
<p>Thanks for the update.</p>
<p>So far, one of my professors is ignoring the +/- system altogether, one is using it cutting off at 3s and 6s, one is using it and alerting the curve each test (currently 92 is an A, 90-91 an A-, 86-89 a B+, 82-86 a B, and 80-82 a B-), and one has just assigned us letter grades on everything (no tests, just papers) and I believe, but am not certain, he will compute those into a 4.0 scale and then give us the grade applying to the cutoff.</p>
<p>So there are lots of ways to do it.</p>