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<p>Again, it depends on what you mean by ‘fail’. If by ‘fail’, you mean that every student scored less than a 60% on a particular exam, then many engineering and science professors at HYPS and certainly MC should be fired. Engineering and science exams, even at the top private schools, are notorious for their difficulty. </p>
<p>But that’s the point of the curve: to ensure that not everybody fails, but only that some do. Scoring a consistent 50% on exams is generally considered to be reasonable performance in most engineering programs as the exams are usually calibrated around that point. </p>
<p>But if your beef is with curves in general, again, I would point out that you’re taking on a monstrous battle involving most technical majors, apparently even including ones at Yale. It’s become a cultural norm within the technical majors to implement difficult exams and then assign grades with curves. Practically nobody in those majors expects to “do well” in the sense of actually scoring high absolute percentages on exams, as such a feat is practically impossible. </p>
<p>As a case in point, I know a guy who earned his engineering BS, MS, and PhD all at MIT, hence making him “MIT-cubed”. He once said that couldn’t recall scoring higher than an 80% on any engineering exam even once in his entire time at MIT, whether undergrad or grad, and most of his scores tended to cluster around 50-65%. Yet he was admitted to MIT for grad school and now he’s an engineering professor at a top program that shall remain unnamed and with numerous publications in top journals. His “poor” exam performances, in terms of absolute scores, clearly didn’t hurt him, as the curve saved him every time. Practically everybody in engineering performs “poorly” in terms of absolute scores.</p>