<p>Although this page is from the engineering handbook, it's the same across the university.</p>
<p>A= Superior
B= ABOVE AVERAGE
C= AVERAGE
D=Below Average/passing
E= Failing.</p>
<p>Superior and above average students go to elite schools like Cornell. Average students go to schools like SUNY Oswego. Grade inflation explained.</p>
<p>"Cornell students today are not better students than 15 years ago"</p>
<p>I do not have any information such as SAT scores or GPA's, but I would imagine Cornell students have gotten better. In just the past two years we have seen applications to Cornell increase by something like 35% allowing Cornell to be more selective and pick better students.</p>
<p>I agree with gomestar that the demographics of college admissions to elite schools have definitely changed. Admissions is probably more accessible to talented students that could not afford to go to college 15 years ago.</p>
<p>Haha so the topic seemed to have changed a bit...Does anyone know how difficult Orgo I and II is at Cornell over the summer? Anyone heard any horror stories?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>I don't know... but I hear it's a lot easier at Oswego.</p>
<p>Just kidding. But tomslawsky, you didn't specify what you mean by average. The opposing point of view (whether or not I agree) is that C still means average--an average knowledge of the subject. If out of a class of 100 Oswego students, 85 of them understand the material very well, it would then be misleading to give 30 or 40 of them a C grade, right?</p>
<p>No, I look at is as C is the average grade. Looking at it mathamatically, it seems that grades should fall in a bell curve, with a C being average and the rest of the grades falling neetly along the lines of a normal distribution. If most students "earn" an A or B, then I personally feel that they were cheated by their prof's who failed to challange them.</p>
<p>Mwah mwah mwah mwah.</p>
<p>sorry man--your second and third sentences have no logical connection. Whether or not a student gets a median grade of B instead of a median grade of C says nothing about how much that student was challenged. (What if that student had done independent study, in an effective class of one student? No matter how much he challenged himself, he would "deserve" an average grade of C on his work.)</p>
<p>ffr: mathematically, neatly, challenge</p>
<p>Yeah, that is a pretty illogical stance there.</p>
<p>What is illogical about grading on a bell curve and defining the average as a "C"?<br>
the point is illogical to you because you are more concearned with correcting spelling than reading the point, I assume because you disagree with it. THe point is that traditionally, in academia at the undergraduate level an average grade is a "C". It's not about whether or not the STUDENT is chalenged, but if the CLASS as a whole is challenged. If the average grade for a class is a "B", then even though the average student sincerely earned a B, the teacher did not set the standard for a grade high enough. Get it now? If you think that this is not logical, you need to go back and review your rules of logic.</p>
<p>cornell orgo is brutal. not gonna lie.</p>
<p>brutal almost everywhere though</p>
<p>Bump.</p>
<p>Don’t return to the discussion about “grade inflation” at Cornell; I’m bumping because I want to hear how difficult Cornell Orgo is currently.</p>
<p>^ Bump. I agree. Especially since I’m taking it in the Fall.</p>
<p>^i’m taking it next fall too!</p>
<p>i believe my class avg 3 yrs ago for orgo 3580 was 62 39 41. for the prelims =) they were brutallllll. the teachers ask stuff thats not really mentioned in class</p>
<p>Personally I thought orgo wasn’t hard at all. I took both orgo 1 and orgo 2, and you guys will have Ganem in fall. He is a great teacher, although ******y. He was kinda mean in office hours. But orgo isnt hard dont worry about, just put effort into it. I visited the tutors for chem 1057 a lot and read and did all the problemsets. Sign up for chem 1057 btw, its helpful. And orgo 1 means weren’t bad for us, 70s and 60s. Orgo 2 we had like 71 55 45. but do your reading, work, and visit tutors=formula to an A+</p>
<p>wow, I took orgo two years ago and I don’t remember the means of any of the prelims. but it was pretty tough. the prof that year said that the grading was supposed to get easier.</p>
<p>if you check out the median grade reports you’ll see that the Fall 2010 median grade for 3570 (first semester of orgo) was a B.</p>
<p>I thought the class was overall pretty tough, I hung in there just slightly below the mean most of the time and got through it though.</p>
<p>Means are irrelevant since the class is always curved to a B. The lower the mean, the more mistakes you can get away with. When you get to med school, you will find that you have to learn more material AND the means are in the 80’s (meaning you have to score 94+ to score 1 std dev above the mean). It’s much easier to be able to score a 65 and still stand out.</p>