<p>I am a biochemistry major at a UC in California</p>
<p>I was wondering if someone familiar with university curve grading could evaluate the strange method my professor used to set final grades for the class.</p>
<p>Keep in mind I only know the average, the standard deviation, my own specific score, and a rough grade distribution.</p>
<p>The average score for the class was a 193/400 or roughly a 48% and the standard deviation was 90.</p>
<p>For this class my professor failed half the class (D and F) and likely gave 25% Cs, 15% Bs and 10% As (I'm guessing with the Cs bs and as but it should be pretty close to the actual.</p>
<p>Now, I got 305.5/400 which is roughly a 76.35% and I received a B+. I believed that I deserved an A so I emailed my professor to ask why I got what I got. </p>
<p>She said that she graded on two curves. Anyone who got lower than 50% raw (200/400) failed. that was the first curve. The second curve was everyone above 50% and instead of using the 193 average as a benchmark, she used an average from one of her previous class from an earlier semester.</p>
<p>This doesn't make any sense to me and I was wondering what justification there is for using two curves as it definitely screwed me over.</p>
<p>Two curves? It’s just one grading formula to me (and your classic mixture distribution of 2 normals for the grades, the bad students and the good ones)…
Anyway, a 50% failure rate is not a good thing for a prof, still, a 76.35% sounds like a B+ to me. I don’t know how big you class was, but depending on how the rest of the “good students” (those who didn’t fail) fared, you may definitely not be among the actual top students, thus not “deserving” of an A.</p>
<p>Also, if you were compared to the good students of a previous semester, it’s possible that they simply did better than your class, so that the highest grade given would have been a B+. Frankly, I’d be grateful that she’s grading on a curve at all, and move on with your life.</p>
<p>76% sounds like a C to me, yet you received a B+ and are mad?</p>
<p>As already stated: be happy you got such a good grade for such performance; grade curving isn’t something that is always done, and you should be happy that it helped you.</p>
<p>I find the best way to evaluate the fairness of your grade is by assuming that there would be no curve, and then seeing if the professor was actually out to get you. (just because your classmates are incompetent doesn’t mean you should get perfect marks for being relatively smart)</p>
<p>They really do have grade inflation in the US do they? At my alma mater and my current institution, that is a B+ (85 and above is A). And in university, still a pretty good grade to get. Well, at least in mathematics.</p>