<p>Article about Princeton's fight against grade inflation:</p>
<p>Recently seen tee shirt, "If I wanted an A, I would have gone to Harvard"</p>
<p>At 41% A's, wouldn't it still mean that the median grade (and grade point avg) is still around a B+? (Wouldn't a meaningful fight against grade inflation require a certain percentage of C's and D's? ;))</p>
<p>Wow! Many of my D's UC classes state a policy of 15% A's and most of the kids were 4.+ GPAs at entry, so you have to figure that of the 400 kids in your lecture almost every one of them is a straight A type of student, yet only 60 of you are going to receive an A.</p>
<p>I can, though, see a point to the fact that mastery is learning the material, and does not need to be subjected to a curve which seems to be designed to weed people out of the major and out of the school. If most kids are brilliant, why couldn't they all pass and a huge portion earn A's? Seeing the dramatic attrition over three quarters of O chem at a UC is stunning- the kids bailed out left and right as they flunked or got Ds and then had to face retaking the class in hopes of moving on.</p>
<p>41% A's is a reduction? And if they're halfway there (as the article says) that means that the previous year they had 47% A's?</p>
<p>/me is confused.</p>
<p>Somemom: A's are scarce at Olin, and it isn't because a curve is applied. Our tests and course work are designed to be difficult enough that earning an A is very difficult.
And it isn't that Oliners are poor students; our school has an average SAT of 1510 and an average high school gpa of about 4.3-4.5.
Also, nothing is designed to weed students out here. First semester freshman year is pass/no record, and students are able to work with professors to remediate poor grades.</p>
<p>Yeah Olin! I have been impressed with what I have read, but that pass/no pass first year thing (MIT does this too, i think??) seems like a great way to help kids adjust to the expectations of university and allow them to take risks along the way.</p>
<p>Yeah, it does. </p>
<p>A semester of pass/no record also helps kids lose the 'grades are everything' mindset, and get a little closer to the 'learning is what really matters' mindset.</p>
<p>My college in the middle ages had no grade inflation. Tough to get that A or B, even. However, looking at the situation from a teacher's perspective, I remember teaching level I and II of Spanish, and we had a lot of kids who were there because they had to be, or their parents felt they should learn it, etc., and my grades fell much more onto a bell curve. Now I am teaching Level III Regulars and Honors, and most of the kids in the III Regulars class are there because they want a higher rated diploma, etc., so my grades overall are higher. In the Honors classes, those kids really want to be there, have shown they are talented in the subject and performed well previously and the percentage of A's and B's rises dramatically. So it isn't grade inflation (I do have some Honors kids fail, even, but VERY few), but talented kids. In an elite school, I would hope that the kids are also elite, and grade inflation, (although I believe it exists) would not be as huge as it is made out to be.</p>
<p>Well, we can't really say what is and what isn't grade inflation because we don't have any objective way to say what a C is. </p>
<p>At Olin: (this is nothing official, just my observations based on 2 completed semesters)
A = exceeded (very high) expectations, performed at a level significantly above Olin normal, teacher has complete confidence in the student's knowledge of the material and ability to apply and communicate it, capable of helping other students learn the material
B = met (very high) expectations, performed at a level above Olin normal, teacher has negligible doubt in student's knowledge of the material and ability to apply and communicate it
C = didn't quite meet expectations, preformed at (or slightly below) Olin normal, teacher has some reason to doubt the studen'ts understanding of the material, or the student's ability to apply it, or the student's ability to communicate it.
D = failed to meet expectations, performed well below Olin normal, teacher has significant reservations regarding student's understanding of the material
F = profoundly failed to meet expectations, failed to complete work, teacher does not believe that the student has any grasp of the material</p>
<p>Personally, I like Reed College's policy. Little grade inflation, and don't tell the students their grade unless they fall to a C- or below. Avg GPA at graduation is 2.8.</p>
<p>I think college is the perfect time for previously straight-A students to receive C's because it's a reality check. You are in a competitive environment with extremely intelligent students, so you can't all be at the top anymore. C's put things into perspective and make you work harder.</p>
<p>Hopefully, along the way, students learn to care more about learning and collaboration than grades and competition.</p>
<p>This is, of course, the reason Reed College does not provide grades, but getting into grad or a professional school requires comparisons to others at schools that may be more inflated. I understand a student's concern here.</p>
<p>It's hard to undo four or more years of programming, though. To get to these elite colleges in the first place, the students had to worry about their grades. Can we blame them for continuing to do so here?</p>
<p>idad: I understand that concern too. I live it. In 2008 I'll graduate with a less than amazing gpa from a school that will still be far from a brand name. </p>
<p>I hope that people will look beyond my gpa. I know that changing my ideals and obsessing about grades isn't something I'm going to do regardless. </p>
<p>willow: No, we can't blame them. What we can do is try to show them a better way. </p>
<p>If you worry about learning, grades follow.
If you worry about grades, sometimes learning follows, but sometimes it doesn't.</p>
<p>"If you worry about learning, grades follow" I'm not so sure about that. </p>
<p>Much of getting high grades has to do with jumping through the, sometimes idiosyncratic, hoops set up by the instructor. Many grades are based on compulsiveness about busy work, schmoozing the professor, unfortunately getting disallowed but undectable help (i.e. cheating), and other things that are unrelated to learning. Perhaps this is why college gpa predicts so little about career sucess, and even less once you control for post-college education. So everyone who goes to medical school had high grades in college, but these grades, and for that matter, med school grades, tell you nothing about how well someone practices medicine.</p>
<p>Since there are no standards for what an A means, as proven by the fact that Princeton can simply decide to change the % of A's awarded, no one should think they have learned much from seeing a list of A's on a transcript. Perhaps it means the people carefully chose easy courses, perhaps they took the hard courses in the summer then again during the year, perhaps they are hopeless grinds with no imagination, who never miss a deadline, perhaps they are brilliant. </p>
<p>Should you worry about grades? Depends on your plans. If you want to go to Harvard Law, then yes, you should worry about grades. You should worry a lot. A couple of lousy grades can knock you off the path. If you just want an education, then you should not worry at all. Most people are somewhere in between.</p>
<p>It has all come down to whether students deserve As or not. It can very well be possible that professors, to adhere to the new grade-inflation policy, purposely gave students lower grades even if some students actually merited As. If this is so, then that does not say to me that a Princeton education is challenging and worth-while and not full of the easy As and Gentleman Cs that stereotype the ivies.</p>
<p>afan: I meant that if you worry about learning, you'll generally do well enough. No, you probably won't get straight A quadruple-pluses, but if you've decided to put your energy into learning you'll usually come out ok.</p>
<p>One of the issues in doing this is whether grad and professional schools are "smart enough" to know the differences in policies. </p>
<p>My guess is that they are not, especially med schools. As much as it seems a good idea, I think it will hurt Princeton students admissions chances at the most competitive programs.</p>
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My guess is that they are not, especially med schools. As much as it seems a good idea, I think it will hurt Princeton students admissions chances at the most competitive programs.
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<p>Many years ago, I read an article by Jay Parini, a professor at Dartmouth. He explained why he had succumbed to grade inflation and begun to hike his Bs to As that way: he did not want to short-change his students in fellowship competitions and admission to grad schools.<br>
It's going to be hard for Princeton to remain the outlier. It can only succeed if other schools follow suit.
A couple of years ago, my S took a math course at Harvard. When announcing final grades, the prof noted that the class had done very well and, "since this is not Princeton, I don't feel limited to giving As to only one-third of the class."</p>