<p>But regarding Princeton, the anti-grade inflation policy is only a SUGGESTION, and it's being implemented slowly. I don't think people have really felt the effects of it yet.</p>
<p>I really admire Princeton for taking a step in changing its grading system, but I think that they are approaching it in the wrong way. Limiting the number of A's in a class will also increase the competitiveness in a class, especially, as one person in the article said, if there are only 5 people in a class. My opinion is that harder classes should have a higher percentage of students who can get A's (or maybe I should say, who get the A's that they deserve). People would work harder (although I'm sure Princeton kids are also slaving away at this point) and they will be willing to help each other study.</p>
<p>There was substantial opposition among the Princeton faculty to this new "policy" before it was adopted, and the "policy" was, in the end, so watered down that it is hard to believe that there will be substantial changes observed anytime soon.</p>
<p>The problem is that resistance to being "ranked" compared to peers runs against the grain in America "where all our children are above average."</p>
<p>I'm with prettyfish--I'm looking forward to being challenged in college, and I feel that the level of challenge a college offers (which is obviously related to how hard its grading system is) is an indication of the quality of the education. So hopefully Princeton's new policy works!</p>
<p>(haha, Byerly...I used to listen to that when I was little. where all the men are strong, all the women are good-looking, and all the children...are above-average.)</p>
<p>People at Harvard Yale and Princeton should get all A's; that's what they got in high school, over the ones who now get there A's at easier colleges with less talented kids.</p>
<p>Zant, according to this thread the policy is already in full effect:</p>
<p>High school is not college. Most 4.0's probably shouldn't even be getting all A's in high school. If everyone gets an A, it demeans the value of the A. The thought that everyone should get A's is EXACTLY the problem with grade inflation.</p>
<p>If I get a 3.5 my first semester at Princeton, I will be ecstatic. This from a person who has never worked a day in her life to earn her A's.</p>
<p>High school work is graded at much lower standards than college work.</p>
<p>College courses are much more intense than high school courses.</p>
<p>For example, the EEB 211 course I took (which is supposed to be the AP Bio equivalent) covers all the stuff if AP Bio and much more. Each test is basically the equivalent of a high-school end of semester final in terms of the amount of stuff it covers. The test is all essay questions - there is no multiple choice or anything easy. </p>
<p>Science and math here is very intense and fast-paced. A lot of students accustomed to the slower pace of high school classes have trouble adjusting. Similarly, if you never did a lot of analytical writing in high school, prepare to have trouble with the writing seminar. The writing seminar definitely grades to extremely high standards and will pretty much force you to learn to write if you want to get a good grade. </p>
<p>I understand that most people coming into Princeton had 4.0s and all, but the difficulty of the courses here prevents them from obtaining those 4.0s. That's why science and math courses have curves that grade up instead of down. Humanities wise, courses can still be pretty intense. Only in language courses are grades curved down. For example, you need a 96+ to qualify for an A in CHI 103 (chinese for chinese speakers). </p>
<p>Don't expect college to be easy, especially if you're jumping into a science related track. Orgo at Princeton is pretty much said to be the school's hardest course. The average is usually a 62 or so every year - and these are the best and brightest science students.</p>
<p>"If everyone gets an A, it demeans the value of the A."</p>
<p>If a large group of students in a class get A's because they are more or less equally hardworking, that doesn't mean the value of the A is compromised. </p>
<p>IMHO, grade deflation policy will only exacerbate the cutthroat competition and motivate students to act selfishly to make the 35% bracket. One quality that Princeton lacks is a strong culture of cooperation (exemplified by MIT), and this policy is going to make the situation worse. Naturally students won't be as willing to aid their classmates.</p>
<p>Harder grading will kill the job prospects for the most deserving students, because the interviewer will jsut see the B, and not the person or the school</p>
<p>"because the interviewer will jsut see the B, and not the person or the school"</p>
<p>You have very little experience with the job getting, I see. Princeton already sends letters explaining this. By the time you graduate, many more people will know about Princeton's grade deflation.</p>
<p>Besides, having a b on your transcript doesn't hide your impressiveness as a person. It never does; that's where you're wrong.</p>
<p>Princeton students are still getting it so easy. At schools like UC Berkeley... (i took/am taking math there) there is constant deflation. Having a 15% to 25% of the class getting A's is stretching it. Sure enough, most of the upper-div classes in poli sci, econ and such only have about a 10-15% total of people getting A's.</p>
<p>Are you sure that's because of the UCB grade deflation policy, rather than the caliber of the students?</p>
<p>tsunashima1 - um yes. a lot of professors at cal set a # of people that will get A's. Do you really think that the caliber of students at Cal is much lower than those at Princeton?
It ranks top 5 in undergrad poli sci programs and that is not a joke.. not to mention it is top 3 in undergrad engineering. State schools are known to have grade inflation, not because its students are a "lower" caliber.</p>
<p>So would that 62 in Orgo be curved up or stay as is?</p>
<p>Science courses are all curved. So 62, the average grade, would likely be a B.</p>
<p>Mzhang, has the anti-grade inflation policy affected you at all? Is it strictly enforced, or do the professors ignore it? If the policy is enforced in terms of the amount of As given, do the professors compromise by giving students high Bs?</p>
<p>Limiting the number of As is no different than limiting the number of any other mark, including Fs. Seems to me its a ham-handed way for the Princeton Administration to impose discipline on some professors. (And maybe the only way in dealing with the undisciplined, but tenured). Something strikes me as fundamentally wrong about limiting, by number, any evaluation when dealing with a student body that comes so very highly accomplished. </p>
<p>Are Princeton students paying the price for their schools administration failure to perform its duty to administrate? I believe so.</p>
<p>I don't see that it has anything to do with the administration's failure to administrate, nor do I see that there is anything fundamentally wrong with limiting an evaluation when dealing with a high accomplished student body.</p>
<p>Perhaps some perspective is in order. The grading curves at MIT tend to be extremely harsh. Yet I think we'd all agree that MIT students are highly accomplished. So is that a case of MIT students paying for the MIT administration's failure to perform its administrative duties? Or does that mean that MIT is behaving in a fundamentally wrong manner by limiting the number of evaluations when dealing with its highly accomplished student body. The grading curves at many of top law schools, including Harvard Law, are brutal, even though the students are top notch. Does that mean that Harvard law is behaving fundamentally wrongly? Or let's just restrict ourselves to Princeton itself. Why is it that, historically, engineering and hard science at Princeton (as at practically all other schools) generally tend to be graded far harsher than the non-sciences? Why is it that . historically speaking, the Princeton electrical engineering students tended to have lower grading curves than, say, the Princeton psychology students? Is it because the Princeton EE department behaved in a fundamentally wrong fashion? </p>
<p>Look, I don't want to call people out, but all this bellyaching about Princeton's new grading policy strikes me to a great degree as simple whining. The reality is that in the past, there really were a lot of Princeton students who got high grades while doing very little work. To those people who think it's so terrible that only 35% of all grades can be A's, my response is, hey, it could be a lot worse - i.e., you could be going to MIT or Caltech. If MIT or Caltech stated that from now on, 35% of all grades would be A's, the whole campus would probably erupt in celebration and joy, and yet over time, the reputation of MIT/Caltech for difficulty and rigor would dissipate. And even with the change, I suspect that many if not most Princeton students who are majoring in difficult subjects like engineering, computer science, physics, or similar subjects are probably secretly happy with the grading change because there will no longer be such a discrepancy between their grading and the grading of other students at Princeton. The Princeton electrical engineers are probably thinking: hey, if I'm going to be graded harshly, then so should everybody else at Princeton.</p>