How does your dad feel giving a fake grade? That is the real question.
My kid got a C+ in organic chemistry at her elite school. That was the grade she earned. She didn’t expect it to be bumped up because she was planning on med school.
This is a very pejorative way of phrasing something that really isn’t nearly that negative. Not all students want to test themselves against the best minds in the nation as an undergrad. There is nothing negative or or lacking in a student who wants to get a decent education in the skills they will have to master for a future career or jump through the required hoops to get into the graduate program they want. Some of those students will want to engage with the material at the highest level in graduate school, but they have to get their first.
An elite school is a great place for those students who truly desire that kind of challenge. But I feel that students are being made to feel as if that is the only legitimate thing to desire. It isn’t.
The evidence to prove that point would be difficult to gather. You would have to follow a cohort of kids with similar stats who start as pre-meds. See how the group that goes to elites vs. non-elites fair in medical school admissions. See how many are weeded out and decide medicine isn’t for them, etc. As far as I know, no such study has ever been done. My comments are based on my reading and talking with a medical school dean of admissions. A great MCAT score can help, but what the med schools really want are high GPA AND high MCAT score. A student needs to go where she feels she has the best chance of getting both of those things.
@gallentjill : I am not talking about comparatively/a curve or anything. I guess my point of view is coming from the idea that I think the difficulty of certain base level courses (not even the honors and the ones that host the “brightest minds”…I do not equate the “best test takers” to “the brightest minds” and you may choose to disagree with me on that) is often overblown especially on this forum where you hear students complaining about fairly standard level general chemistry courses that are honestly not be so much harder than a decently competitive state school. I’m just saying that I don’t think even those who test well should be afraid or feel uncomfortable with college classes not feeling like high school and being ultra predictable. I think being challenged/that tiny bit of doubt that you may not make an A is a part of a quality education. I am not advocating for everyone to engage the extremes so much as work with the talent they have and try to enhance it some. I think a lot of the complaints and anxiousness described do come from more than just the “competition” and instead from the fact that they have to stretch their thinking or efforts a little more than they anticipated. Usually when students feel things come too easy, they are being exposed to stuff/scenarios they already know or tasks that are not complex at all. To me, that just isn’t an education. What I do advocate for is honors programs, because many have the base rigor of elites or better and also teach analogous courses in a format that is better for learning and conducive to a better performance.
@NASA2014 : I TAed and graded at GSU, and can tell you that despite me conceding that courses were pitched differently than most elites (though some were quite alright), they did fail folks in a heartbeat. Even if it were “deserved” I suspect that even at schools with “tougher grading” (some professors that still curve to C+/B-, B-, or low B), they would catch hell if the C- range % expanded. Usually in cases where they write simpler exams/assignments (yields 75-85 mean), they design tests that cluster grades heavily around those areas, and in the case of hard assignments/low raw scores, seems the C range is kind of “relaxed” in STEM courses that are service courses for say, pre-healths because they can’t use a C- and will have to repeat the course. If you get a D (or maybe even C-) or an F in a class where exams had medians in high 50s or 60s, then you likely scored an average in the 30s-or lower.
@Much2learn : “That is probably true, but I grading varies a lot by school and subject. I know that at Lehigh, an excellent school but perhaps not elite by cc: standards, orgo was curved to a C+ this year. That is pretty strict grading for a school with a middle 50 percent ACT of 30 - 33.”
I would consider Lehigh elite academically despite not being super duper prestigious (most “elite” schools are not there yet either)
Either way, keep in mind that a C+ is anything between 2.3 and 2.69 for final course GPA. Even among instructors who claim to curve to B-, this sometimes happens. However, instructors do get lots of freedom often within certain bounds). And the thing is, even when the mean is C+/B-, the curve can be done to ensure not many people earn below a solid C. Usually instructors are not doing true bell-curves so much as “adjustments” )which are some sort of curve but obviously not a perfect bell curve) to there whim (though often those using the C+/B- or a B- or B curve/recentering are doing so because of departmental recommendations for core courses) as described in the document below:
https://■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/file/d/1NvGLwn4JTY9ThN08tgovs4n4Hs7wu950/view?usp=sharing
My old professor that I mentioned has had terrible years where his ochem averages were more like 2.4-2.6, and then good years where it is 2.7-3.0. He just lets the quality of the students control it and will not water it down, give more bonus points, or adjust his scale. In some years (the low ones), there were more Ds and Fs than normal (in some cases it was because A grades were scarce) and sometimes he has gotten calls from the Dean (perhaps because his sections are smaller, so if you have 55-60 students, and that year, 10 get D/F, you get plenty of complaints), but still does not change the grades. Technically just doing a statistical adjustment plus some “tricks” could just avoid this, but he just gives them whatever they get versus his scale.
by honors programs, I mean programs hosted by many state flagships for the most talented/scholarship students*, not the special programming options I was talking about certain elites having. Quality teaching methods (problem is many elite privates are stuck on lecture and traditional active learning like clickers, which make for “not overwhelming but more rigorous than HS and far more impersonal” settings), good rigor, still surrounded by great students. I think it just depends on one’s learning style. I just hold out hope that good students would like to learn at a level that reflects their capabilities in the classroom, while also engaging whatever oppurtunities outside of it. I do not think elite privates and publics are the only places (nor necessarily the best) places to do that, but that opinion doesn’t come from a concern that dealing with the competition may be scary/uncomfortable, but that the methods of education are often efficient but not optimal for learning.
https://edusalsa.com/course?c=CHEM%2031A suggests that some (not many) students do get D or F grades in first quarter general chemistry at Stanford. Some students in organic chemistry also get D or F grades, according to https://edusalsa.com/course?c=CHEM%2033 . Presumably, some pre-med dreams end in those courses…
If you are willing to look at Canadian schools, then McMaster, UWO, and UBC.
https://www.science.mcmaster.ca/isci/
http://www.uwo.ca/sci/WISc/
https://intsci.ubc.ca/prospective
UWO’s program is new (they have yet to graduate a cohort) but McMaster’s has been around for a little while (when we we attended a recent open house the program coordinator said that students from the first cohort were getting ready to defend their Ph.D.'s). McMaster’s program is highly competitive to get into receiving around 700 applications for about 60 spots. I don’t know anything about UBC’s program.
The University of Waterloo has a program they call Honours Science, but it is more of a design your own program and doesn’t have the specially designed integrated courses that the other 3 programs do.
https://uwaterloo.ca/science/future-undergraduate-students/programs/honours-science-regular-only
@ucbalumnus : The effect of chemistry on pre-health is well documented and is honestly more acute at other (elite) schools with much higher D/F rates in them: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2814029/pdf/10459_2009_Article_9165.pdf
An article stemming from a collab between your alma mater and Stanford.
https://www.stanforddaily.com/2017/06/03/the-pre-med-drop-out/
Described here in a Stanford Daily article…yuck in terms the tone of the commentary and writing in this article (reads like data driven whining. We get it, being pre-health is tough). Also gonna be blasphemous and say that I’m not sure that chem 33 is one of the harder organic chemistry sequences. Seems like Berkeley, other strong UG chem programs, and Stanford’s Ivy near peers may be a bit rougher, but the chem 14X series for life sciences does look tough, reminiscent of Harvard chem 27 which is tougher than most bio-organic focused ochem sequences (or ochem period) at least if we talk level of content, problems, and not just grade distribution.
D17 came out of a rigorous prep school and was top in her class. She took Calc BC and did well. She was told which Math class to take by her adviser but went against his wishes and took a class that was mostly review for her because she felt she didn’t have a handle on the material, despite having an A in the class and a 5 on the AP. She ended up taking the next class in the sequence during the spring. This required her to make room for an extra Math class but ultimately set her up for success. Sometimes the kids need to think about understanding the material rather than blowing through requirements they may see as a nuisance or uninteresting. They also need to understand that when they are at a highly selective school they are surrounded by other really smart kids, some of whom will be smarter and be able to handle the fast pace of a college class - and blow the curve. There is nothing wrong with taking a class as a review or switching into a lower level class if you need more time/instruction.
@ChoatieMom About your post #171. Choate like any private school chooses a homogeneous student body with kids coming from driven, involved parents. You can’t compare that to a kid coming from a public school which requires that subjects be taught to everyone, of all abilities coming from involved/not involved parents, poor families, families where English is not the first language. My kids have gone to private school their entire lives, with the exception of my son who moved to our local public last year. The difference isn’t so much the curriculum or the teaching but the fact that there is so much more going on in the school. Fights, drugs, hunger (some of his friends don’t have enough to eat), many more LD’s (which private schools are notoriously bad at dealing with.) So yes, Choate may teach “how to think” and “how to discern” and “how to write” but it’s easy for them to do so. The challenge for the public schools is to deliver a top notch education to all kids which I contend is a much bigger nut.
That is why I was never a fan of AP courses. If you get a 5 in AP course but decide to retake it again in college, but you’re struggling in class. Was that 5 really your real score? Or you scored a 5 because there was a huge curved at the end. AP courses may or may not grade on a curve but it’s really a scam after all. If a student really got a 5 but retakes the course. He/she should end up with the same grade.
@NASA2014 : Uhmm…it is an AP exam. They cannot design it so that it matches EVERY school’s and every professor’s rendition of the analogous course. That is impossible. I suspect it is designed versus more standard level analogs. Some of the STEM AP exams have been “improved” to enhance conceptual understanding but may still lack content in comparison to a) elite privates and b) less selective, but still competitive schools undergoing curricular reform.
I’ll give examples of elite privates/publics: WUSTL’s general chemistry 1 has “true” quantum concepts in it, as in students learning particle in the box model and things of that nature. The AP exam stresses NO quantum concepts, even those at the level covered in most gen. chem 1 renditions at more/most selective schools. In fact, AP just recently added “some” structural chemistry concepts (basic things like resonance and drawing a lewis structure), but tends to de-emphasize certain more conceptual things related to structure in favor of mathematics like gas laws, titrations/equilibria, and basic level thermodynamics (which mimics general chemistry 2 at most universities and not general chemistry 1. ), with almost all related questions in the AP free response being wordy (they try to couch in a lab/experimental context, so students learn to read), yet still, each sub-prompt ends up usually being SINGLE-concept. Most professors will have many problems that are multi-concept in a single prompt or sub-prompt, where even if they are kind of "plug and chug"ish, students may have to link several equations/math related processes from seemingly unrelated concepts to solve.
Places like Emory, Michigan, and many LACs (highly selective or not) have moved towards integrating even more structural concepts than most schools in their general chemistry sequences and in fact the first two have integrated a lot of real organic chemistry (as in reactivity and the standard levels of spacial learning emphasized in a sophomore level organic course, but also connected back to some gen. chem concepts. I think both even teach things like mass spec. and emphasize some more physics oriented concepts. They both use an atom’s first approach + some more, and Michigan has been doing it far longer, since 1997. Emory started 2-3 years ago and just fully implemented the integration of organic chemistry this past cycle). In these cases, since these scenarios/schools have sequences that deviate significantly in emphasis, focus, and content, AP may have limits for giving students content exposure, but may still afford an exposure and work ethic advantage provided that the student doesn’t “retake” the course EXPECTING it to be a complete repeat or a cruisefest academically.
And yes, the difference in the curve may also have an effect. I imagine AP to be a better predictor for schools that run standard renditions of key courses.
@cleoforshort :" Sometimes the kids need to think about understanding the material rather than blowing through requirements they may see as a nuisance or uninteresting. They also need to understand that when they are at a highly selective school they are surrounded by other really smart kids, some of whom will be smarter and be able to handle the fast pace of a college class - and blow the curve."
I see your point and understand that this happens in AP classes, so it may help if some retook the college rendition, I am just tired of hearing about the curve thing, because it has nothing to do with how the instructor pitches the course: The amount of content , depth of content, cognitive complexity of demands from students does. I’m iffy on the curve thing, because challenging instructors who gives assessments with lower/curve-worthy raw scores make for substantially more room for error unlike in an easier course (where “smarter” certainly will not struggle because they likely already know the content and there is little cognitive complexity), so one may be able to screw up the first exam, catch up, and then do well on others to score a good grade, but you never know. If you take it in the wrong year where there is a lot of other talent, or very well-prepared students in the course, then the curve may either be tighter around the middle or slightly bi-modal. regardless of what the mean/median is. I once tutored students who were initially more “average” who took a challenging instructor in a year with a stronger than normal cohort. The median/mean said one thing, but the distribution was actually skewed towards higher scores, so it took a significant performance beyond means of like 65 or so to just get a B that year and neither made the cut-off even when one had like a 75 average (she improved to it). It just depends on the situation. I just wouldn’t ALWAYS think of this idea of a curve being blown. Just ensure that you have the best foundation possible in the case that the instructor is more challenging than normal. Either way, curves in college are a statistical recentering of the lower raw scores to some letter grade. A couple of very smart students cannot “blow” a curve in a decent sized course. It is usually based upon what the middle and “not super naturally talented in area but works hard” students do.
Sometimes you can’t predict what will happen with regards to relative preparation but you can know that you did everything possible to optimize your chances of rising to whatever challenges. It may be better to think of it as one’s foundation/study habits versus the material/demands. While natural talent (being “smart”) can help a small chunk in some courses, many/most of the B+ and higher scores just do well by working hard and doing all they can to ensure that they have properly learned pre-requisite material, so I wouldn’t ever go in worrying about a curve so much as the complexity(may have little to do with “pace”. Even very smart kids are less prepared for complexity than a fast pace. When courses at elites throw lots of content at students at a fast pace and only expect them to regurgitate details and do surface learning, usually exam averages are relatively high and curves are not needed) of what the chosen instructor is known for requiring.
Generally a 5 in an AP class means approximately that you would have gotten an A at a solid but not top 20 institution. If a school will only take a 5 for credit and/or placement, that’s a sign that the courses do not line up exactly – that a 5 on the AP is equivalent to about a C in their rendition of the course – just enough to reasonably move on and take the next class. Sometimes that’s because of a misalignment of coverage, but often it’s because of this difference we are citing between the way that HS classes are taught and the way that elite colleges teach the very same content with much more challenging problem sets and exams. AP classes are not really taught or tested at the level of an elite college course.
^^ I doubt the scores are that predictive of grades at various levels of schools There are many variables. Do you have data that shows this? Agree with your last sentence and this is why the elite colleges want the students taking their course.
@cleoforshort, my point had nothing to do with public vs. private schools but with the skills students need to be truly prepared for college level work. Like some private schools, some public schools serve their students very well. The discussion here is about what is required to do well in a rigorous college program wherever that preparation comes from.
Not sure that makes any logical sense. Top 20 schools are full of AP-5’s…put them all in the same class, and by definition, half of those 5’s are now below average at ~T20 Uni. Should a below average kid still receive an A?
AP chem: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-chemistry-frq-2017.pdf
A Dartmouth midterm: https://www.dartmouth.edu/~genchem/1718/spring/6winn/pdfs/Exam2Sol.pdf
I’d rather just go back in time and take the AP again to be honest.
AP biology: https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap-biology-frq-2017.pdf
Admittedly, many elites still struggle to get professors to do more concept/experiment focused intro. biology courses (so their rendition may be AP content plus some more and have an emphasis on just tiny details. Style of AP may technically be better, but honestly usually content does not overlap well with even those elites which have a far heavier focus on chemical concepts as well as deeper genetics), but most schools above 12 or so do, so I will use Harvard Life Sciences 1a and Columbia’s :
Harvard:http://people.fas.harvard.edu/~lsci1a/F06final01.pdf
https://courseworks2.columbia.edu/courses/39163/pages/exams
Okay, I’ll throw in MIT:
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/biology/7-013-introductory-biology-spring-2013/exams/MIT7_013S13_Final_SP09Q.pdf
Once again, I will take an AP exam: AP exam also seems to have some memorization focused softballs (like describe gel ) and some “read the data and tell me the trend without an explanation” softballs as well. All 3 of these seem to assume that you can learn chemical concepts well and likely already have exposure to the stuff at the level of AP OR are just straight up reteaching students how to think conceptually and experimentally in biology in addition to a lot more content. But they have the molecular biology/genetics focus I mention and don’t even bother with ecology. Knowing real chemistry is really advantageous.
A big “ouch” especially at Harvard and MIT if you have a poorer chemistry background and poor study habits. Columbia’s is brutal in its own way and they were a place that led a broader movement to cover more advanced experimental concepts in context of “introductory” material in biology. Again, even with elites outside of this tier, it is sort of a different ballgame content wise and style. The second semester of biology at my alma mater is experimentally focused classical and molecular genetics (they try to keep up with the times by focusing upon DNA technology and even things like basic RNAi and CRISPR). It is pretty much a watered down version of what MIT does and in fact, it appears that the problem sets (shamefully many schools, including some elites are still so far removed from a problem based rendition of intro. biology, that they don’t even have p-sets, so even if my version was watered down versus a high bar like H or M, I appreciate the effort) we had may have been partly stolen or “inspired” by theirs. One can only get AP credit for the first semester (which is sort of a slightly enhanced version of the usual cell biology/metabolism course taught at other selective schools. They get into cancer genetics too)
@sunnyschool : Was that directed at me? I have never looked into it in much more depth than I am about to say. I think I have read quite a few articles in agreement with you (as I would) that even suggest that at some schools, there is even much of a distinction between those who scored 4 versus 5 (note that I think this article was associated with Questbridge which sort of has a “nuanced” view on AP…and that is all I will say about that lol). I think AP students would have some work ethic related advantage overall so may have a higher collective average than the whole course GPA, but it isn’t necessarily as big as folks would think. Like I read one that monitored gen. chem at my alma mater Emory and the section averages were usually 2.7-2.8, but maybe AP 4/5s “retaking” were 3.1-3.2, which is certainly significant, but it by no means suggests that they are all getting A grades, more like, more are hitting B+ and less B-. Anecdotally, this has been what I’ve observed through tutoring and stuff. Most instructors adjust the difficulty of the course’s assignments and exams to account for all the 4s/5s (a lot!) as @bluebayou hints at. I think they went to Duke, so they may understand how that phenomenon manifests itself even more than I do, as Duke also has a lot of rigor in math and physics, which is not Emory’s forte (Emory is biology, chemistry, psychology, statistics, and neuroscience. Math, CS, and physics undergraduate programs are super inconsistent/unstable for UG instruction and look like the life science’s “red-headed step children” at Emory).
@ChoatieMom I understood what you were saying, but giving examples of how your child was prepared at a super selective private boarding school does not translate to the experience of most kids who attend public school in this country. It would be great if all kids who were academically talented had access to the kind of teaching and preparation offered at a school like Choate but that doesn’t always (or ever) happen in public schools.
In response to my claim that if a school will only take a 5 for placement/credit, that means that a 5 is approximately equivalent to a C in that school’s course…
Nope, I don’t have data to back that up. My assertion is based on the fact that a school will generally give credit if and only if they believe that the student has sufficient background to be successful in the next course in the sequence. In general that level of mastery is a C at most schools. With a D you’d typically get credit but generally not be able (or at least, well-advised) to use it as a prerequisite for a follow-on course, and might not be able to count the course toward your major. (Generally, of course) if a school will only give credit/placement for a 5, it means they don’t think a 4 shows sufficient mastery to move on. So for that school, a 4 on the AP exam may map to approximately D-level mastery at best on the college’s version of the class, and a 5 would map to a C-ish (or better, of course – some 5s are stronger than others). The scores a school will accept for credit in a particular course are probably the best metric we have of alignment between their version of the course and the AP version. Of course, sometimes it means something different like “the AP exam doesn’t quite cover everything we think is important, so even with a 5 you’ll be missing content, but if you got a 5, you’re probably smart enough to catch up.”
I think what people have to understand is that letter grades are not a standardized system. You may think that because you’re top 5% in the country, you’re “an A student” and should be able to get an A in any class if you do the work. But for some classes in some schools, especially where you’re in with a lot of top 1% students, that may not be the case. And a B or a C in such a class is nothing to be ashamed of! And in some cases you really can get an A if you do the work, but doing the work is going to be much harder than what you’re used to.