<p>Median</a> Grades for Undergraduate Courses - Winter 2012</p>
<p>When colleges compress the range of grades, they reduce the informational value of grades to employers, graduate and professional school admissions officers, and the students themselves. I will give Dartmouth credit for putting median course grades on student transcripts and on their web site.</p>
<p>What’s also a little upsetting is that in some cases different sections of the same course have very different median grades. (Look at the 6 sections of Econ 1.)</p>
<p>I can imagine an upper level course with 10 students where an A might be an appropriate median grade. But introductory classes with 70-150 students and an A- median? That seems really wrong.</p>
<p>IMHO, if the standards of mastery for a particular class are well established and are set at an appropriate level for the student body, anyone who meets those standards should get the grade they have earned. </p>
<p>What is the point of grading? Is it to indicate how well the student masted the material, or is it to impose an artificial competition and rank? </p>
<p>And, as noted, D prints the average grade for each course on the student’s transcript.</p>
<p>BTW, JHS, I glanced through the list and saw only one class with over 100 students and an A- average: some kind of psych class. Most of the big classes, which I assume are introductory, seem to have some kind of B average.</p>
<p>I agree with Consolation.</p>
<p>And JHS, perhaps one section of Econ 1 had a lower median because it’s full of members of the hockey team. Or something.</p>
<p>Theoretically you could have an intro class to say Calculus, which has a pretty straightforward set of skills you should have mastered, and all those smart Dartmouth kids could all get A’s. The surprise is that it doesn’t IMO. (I saw the same thing with the histology class my dh taught med students.) I think if everyone does A work everyone should get A’s. I do feel sorry for kids who end up with the lousy TA and do worse than everyone else. My older son met up with a lab TA that he just couldn’t make happy.</p>
<p>They paid for those grades, and they should have them!</p>
<p>That’s because at Lake Wobegon “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average”</p>
<p>news flash; the same is true for most top private colleges (with the possible exceptions of Caltech and MIT). </p>
<p>How do you think Brown ends up with a 3.6 mean GPA of its graduates? Unlike at Dartmtouth, where many of its courses maybe A/A-, at Brown, most of its courses are A/A-. Similar at Yale.</p>
<p>Most top private colleges have mean GPAs of 3.3-3.4, and Dartmouth is in that range. There is nothing new here. Sorry, OP.</p>
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<p>Theoretically, yes, but in practice it will never happen. STEM profs curve courses; it’s in their DNA. :D</p>
<p>fwiw: D has had some grade inflation just in the past few years. Top 35% (bottom honors) was a 3.60 for the graduates in '10, but that number is now a 3.67, which is a huge increase in ~3 years.</p>
<p>Why would we want to risk their self-esteem?</p>
<p>. . . and the offending courses are:</p>
<p>Earth Sciences 2, Evolution of Earth and Life (167 students, A- median)</p>
<p>Psychology 6, Introduction to Neuroscience (175 students, A- median). Easy to tell why THAT’s a popular course!</p>
<p>From my experience TAing at a top school, this is not a matter of refusing to artificially deflate grades for uniformly brilliant students. It is fear of students who expect A range grades deciding not to enroll in any humanities courses that have real standards. Giving inflated grades is a form of self-protection for all but the most established and popular professors.</p>
<p>Maybe as these colleges are getting more and more selective, the profs are comparing the students of today to the ones from previous eras, and grades have crept up.</p>
<p>This is something that people get upset about periodically, but really, why should anybody care? Is there some potential employer or grad school that’s complaining that they can’t figure out whether Dartmouth grads are qualified or not?</p>
<p>[Dartmouth</a> College](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/Dartmouth.html]Dartmouth”>Dartmouth College) indicates that GPAs were around 3.42 in 2007.</p>
<p>Of course, there may have been grade inflation since then.</p>
<p>Dartmouth is one of the worst grade inflation examples around. [National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/]National”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/)</p>
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<p>Most veteran Profs I’ve met who started their teaching careers during the '50s and '60s would have given many more C, D, and even F grades if they were comparing students from the last 2 decades with those they had in their first two decades of their teaching careers. </p>
<p>They’ve felt forced to grade higher due to pressures from college admins, teaching evals, and irate students/parents calling about why their special snowflakes are getting a B+ or lower grade rather than the “A they deserve”.</p>
<p>cobrat, don’t believe everything that people tell you about how things were in the good ol’ days, back when giants walked the earth, etc., etc. It’s significantly harder to get into Dartmouth now than it was in past decades, and the admittees are super-achievers, many (probably most) of whom have rarely if ever seen a B, much less a C, D or F. They’re also hard workers.</p>
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<p>They’re not just “people”, but Professors who’ve taught undergraduates since the 1950’s and '60s. As those with firsthand experiences in being able to compare the academic levels of students over the decades, they have a much better vantage point than most of us. </p>
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<p>Part of the reason for college being much more competitive is the fact that a much larger proportion of the US high school graduates are now applying to colleges compared to the '50s and early-mid '60s. </p>
<p>Greater numbers applying for similar numbers of limited seats…far greater competition.</p>
<p>As for many students not seeing Cs, Ds, and Fs, a part of that has to do with the increasing trend of grade inflation which has gotten so bad in places that sometimes even HS graduates with B+/A HS averages must be placed in my city’s public community colleges because their academic preparation is considered so woefully inadequate that they’re unprepared for the regular college-level courses offered by the 4-year colleges.</p>
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They’re still people, and they can still be full of baloney. People always say stuff like this. You, as a young person, are supposed to roll your eyes when you hear it, not accept it.</p>
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<p>Must be that Econ-on-Ice course. </p>
<p>There is a different way to look at those averages. Most the schools that are criticized admit and enroll students who have excelled through their entire K-12 and have mastered the art of earning their grades. Take a look at the GPA and standardized tests scores. And while you are at it take a look at the (misleading) GPA reported by the College Board for SAT takers. What is the percentage of students an average of higher than a B? </p>
<p>The real discussion should not be about the average grades, but about the difficulty of getting those high grades. It takes quite a leap of faith to believe that the most selective schools in the country have changed from the “pay your fees and collect your bees” mode to a different letter. And it takes quite a leap of faith that getting one of those As does not require superior work. </p>
<p>Oh, before I forget, that type of “higher-end” stratification Beliavsky seems so determined to push for is simply the domain of the misguided. The same misguided group that has already poisoned our education system with the pursuit of “elitist” and “separatist” crutches, and along the way love of learning of plenty a teenager.</p>
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<p>College students in general study substantially less than they used to, and my default assumption is that is true for Dartmouth students.
[Too Much Free Time on Campus?
New York Times
AUGUST 22, 2010](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/8/22/why-are-college-students-studying-less”>http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/8/22/why-are-college-students-studying-less</a>)
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<p>At the NYT forum linked above, Philip Babcock, a co-author of the report, attributed the decline in studying to “Falling Standards in Universities”.</p>