<p>Is it uncommon for college professors to round grades?</p>
<p>For many of my classes I'm .10% or .20% away from a solid A, but it shows as an A-. I'm sooooo mad! Despite my hardest efforts, it seems being very close to an A solid doesn't cut it!</p>
<p>Most of my professors didn’t tell us the exact grading scale. They just kept track of the points we got on assignments and exams, and determined a scale at the end. (One professor said he didn’t like to use “hard” cut-offs because most classes will end up with several distinct performance clusters naturally; for him it made much more sense to use gaps between clusters than arbitrary numbers as cut-offs for grades.)</p>
<p>this is very interesting</p>
<p>Varies on professor. Sometimes they may round up a couple percent if you have, say, good attendance. Other times they won’t round up at all, even if .01% away. Rounding up at 0.5 is probably more common than truncating but it all depends.</p>
<p>And of course some don’t use scales.</p>
<p>hehe but if your professor rounds up ~.20% for you then what about the person .30% or .40% or 1% or 3%? or…etc</p>
<p>Schools should abandon their wierd grading systems (ex: 4.0 = A, 3.7=A-, 3.3 = B+). </p>
<p>They should just multiply your grade percentage by 4.0. That way you could actually get a 3.6 in a class that you earned instead of falling down to a 3.3. I don’t get it. </p>
<p>Anyone know why schools grade this way?</p>
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<p>A lot of professors I’ve had have said this, but I don’t see how this can possibly be true in a class with 100+ students. </p>
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<p>Because different classes are curved differently, and especially when the class is small, the variance between what performance would be what grade is already more random than that difference between an A and an A-.</p>
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<p>From my experience, the general rule of thumb for rounding is if you’re at xx.50 or higher, you round up. So the person with .40% will be very lucky, but the person 1% away is just SOL. Sometimes it’ll make a difference in grade, sometimes it won’t.</p>
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<p>I can’t say I’ve had classes that were 100+ students, but I know in all the classes I’ve TAed, up to about 25 students, there has been fairly good clustering. You see the same clustering on homework grades and test grades, so it makes sense to see the same thing on final grades.</p>
<p>"Because different classes are curved differently, and especially when the class is small, the variance between what performance would be what grade is already more random than that difference between an A and an A-. "</p>
<p>But why does there have to be only 4.0’s, 3.7’s, 3.3’s, 3.0’s…handed out?</p>
<p>A teacher can still curve everyone up a couple tenths of a point (or more) for different classes, but why cant they also hand out 3.8’s, 3.6’s, 3.5’s…etc? It would seem much more equitable that way. </p>
<p>That way, there isn’t a steep drop off for just ~1-2% points difference (example: 90% getting a 3.7 but a 89% getting a 3.3) and someone who did in fact do better in the class, will get a higher grade (example: someone with an 89% will get a higher “grade” than someone with a 86%; instead of both of them getting a 3.3).</p>
<p>I wonder if there is an actual reason they do it the way they do, or if its just tradition…or if its just a bit of unequitable grade deflation built into the system.</p>
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<p>That’s a school-wide, not a professor-based decision and a whole different topic.</p>
<p>Fwiw, at my U, we have 4.0s, 3.5s, 3.0s, etc. We don’t even get the in between grades like those above.</p>
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<p>That’s about the worst system I’ve ever heard of. You’re telling me you should pass a class (2.0) if you only understand half of the material (50%)? And the ONLY way you could get a 4.0 is if you’ve earned a 99% or higher. Let’s think about this for a second…</p>
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<p>For my school I’d have said it actually helped inflate grades. We didn’t have +/- grades, and it was pretty rare for anyone to get anywhere close to a 95% in a class. That meant a 90% was just as much a 4.0 as a 99%.</p>
<p>I’ve had professors who would give students whom he liked A’s even though they had a high B average (doesn’t do +s and -s). Likewise, I’ve had professors who don’t give a **** if you’re .1 off.</p>
<p>Coming from a high school that has grades purely based off of numbers (i.e. 96%), I actually like the 4.0 system. It allows breathing space so people don’t go insane… which is something most people can’t appreciate in HS. If you have a really high grade in a class and have a maelstrom of work in other classes, it is a huge relief to be able to ease up a bit in that class and not worry about losing the 4.0</p>
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<p>Maybe I didn’t explain it well… There is so much else that varies grades and GPA so much more that is unrealistic to control for, so already no one looks at GPA as a perfect representation of a student. Changing this thing doesn’t really change any sort of “unfairness” so there’s not really a point. </p>
<p>Maybe an analogy? Imagine a very well shuffled deck. If you’re dealing out for a card game you’re not going to make the game any more fair for everyone by shuffling more if it’s already very well shuffled.</p>
<p>“That’s about the worst system I’ve ever heard of. You’re telling me you should pass a class (2.0) if you only understand half of the material (50%)? And the ONLY way you could get a 4.0 is if you’ve earned a 99% or higher. Let’s think about this for a second…”</p>
<p>You’re missing my point. I’m wondering why schools have the block type grading systems (4.0, 3.7, 3.3…) and if you read my later post I clarified that professors could still add a type of a “curve” that would solve your issues above. I’m confused, I didnt say ANYTHING about passing a class w/ a 50%.</p>
<p>“no one looks at GPA as a perfect representation of a student. Changing this thing doesn’t really change any sort of “unfairness” so there’s not really a point.”</p>
<p>You’re right, changing is probably more trouble than its worth (and in the big picture will change very little for the vast majority of students) but since GPA is so heavily relied upon might as well try to make it as accurate a measure as possible. </p>
<p>I guess I’m just curious how this grading system got set up in the first place (doesn’t seem to make any intuitive sense).</p>
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<p>50% * 4.0 = 2.0</p>
<p>Fwiw, in general, no one is going to care about one individual grade. They care about the overall grades. There has to be a cut off and someone is always going to be unhappy. I did dual enroll at a CC that gave out the 4.0, 3.9, etc grades. It was so obnoxious. You had to fight for every single point. Poorly worded question? Had to go argue it rather than just letting it go because you were in the “range” of a 4.0 or whatever. If it means THAT much to you, find a college that grades the way you like.</p>
<p>romanigypsyeyes,</p>
<p>clearly you care much more about it than I. I was just curious at first and am more and more starting to feel the need to defend myself against your posts. </p>
<p>“50% * 4.0 = 2.0”</p>
<p>The college says what is passing. Obviously if they change the grading system then the school’s passing GPA, prerequisite GPA,…will have to change with it. That goes without saying (or so I thought). </p>
<p>“It was so obnoxious. You had to fight for every single point. Poorly worded question? Had to go argue it rather than just letting it go because you were in the “range” of a 4.0 or whatever.”</p>
<p>Some students will argue no matter what. Honestly, overall, I think a change would cause students to “argue” less about every point because it would have a minimal effect on their GPA (say a drop from a 3.7 to a 3.6 VS a drop from a 3.7 to a 3.3). </p>
<p>“Fwiw, in general, no one is going to care about one individual grade. They care about the overall grades. There has to be a cut off and someone is always going to be unhappy.”</p>
<p>True, but the overall grade is made up of the individual grades. I don’t think someone who sees a proportional change in thier GPA due to their % grade in a class will be unhappy about the “cut off.” Someone who, percentage wise, earned a 3.6, but received a 3.3, is more likely to be unhappy IMO.</p>
<p>Whatdidyou, I see your point but I suspect that following your proposal would just cause more headaches than the problem it solves. romanigypsyeyes already had a good point about student needing to argue about every single point. I am more concerned about grades that are not computed from a number (e.g. grading papers instead of math exams). I suspect it’s already difficult enough to justify the difference between a B+ and a B paper. How would professors decide between a 3.2 or 3.1? </p>
<p>I do agree with you that there’s a lack of differentiation at the top of the grading scale though. A 3.3 is already below average at many colleges, and there isn’t much room further up the grading scale. That problem would be much more efficiently solved, in my opinion, by deflating grades. If the median GPA was lowered to a 2.7, for instance, we would have four letter grades (A, A-, B+, B) to distinguish between above-average performance instead of just two (A, A-). </p>
<p>Many countries do actually strive to keep the average close to the center of the grading scale. That hasn’t worked in the US because the free market for postsecondary education favors never-ending small gradual grade inflation. (Students with higher GPAs are more likely to graduate and get better jobs and grad school offers; but only if it’s not widely known that the grades of your institution are inflated above average, so you can’t inflate grades too overtly.)</p>
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<p>I’m not really sure how you got that, but you’d be wrong. Considering my overall GPA Is over a 3.8, the majority of my grades are 4.0s and I don’t really care about getting the occasional 3.5. </p>
<p>I was also merely responding to your statement that you said nothing of the sort. You did. I was just pointing that out. It may not have been what you meant, but I wanted to demonstrate where I got that from.</p>
<p>romanigypsyeyes,</p>
<p>I didn’t say anything of the sort. I never said a 2.0 was “passing”, you did. You misunderstood what I said, but I see the confusion and where you got it from.</p>
<p>My grades are somewhat similar. Although, 3.3’s are a bit less forgiving than 3.5’s. If I seem argumentative, it’s cause I sensed it from your posts and I like to debate. Sorry if I was wrong. </p>
<p>b@r!um has a good point - I didn’t really think of papers (I’m an accounting major which, in general, does not require subjective grading). </p>
<p>Grading papers is quite subjective. But professors already do in fact assign a precise percentage grade to each paper (hopefully using the same critical eye for all student papers in the class).
But I guess you’re right that they probably don’t sweat it too much and 1st decide if it is an A, A -, B+…paper before further differentiating the papers in each stack.</p>
<p>Yes, grade inflation is a problem. My school has a thing where it will make the class average ____ and curve to get it no matter how easy or how difficult the class. Let’s just say, I’ve had my grade curved up and down in different classes. Sort of bizzare, but I guess it protects from too much grade inflation as well as tough grading professors.</p>
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<p>Not all of them. In fact, the vast majority of my professors assign 4.0s, 3.5s, etc to papers. I rarely have a percentage. And I am in two paper-heavy majors.</p>