Oh, gosh, that’s an easy one. Lower division STEM courses almost always have a curve, which limits the number of high grades. and ensures low grades. So perhaps the discipline is not “harder” per se, but the grading definitely is. That is just a fact of college life.
No doubt many do, but is their decision incentivized by the C’s in Frosh Chem? 
But I can guarantee you that they won’t call that person a member of Big Law or Doctor.
Is this true, in general? The STEM classes I took weren’t curved. They were just hard.
Because you can find many more STEM majors that can discuss Chaucer than you can find Gender Studies majors that can apply differential equations.
I remember the grading scale for my organic chemistry class, 80-100 A, 60-79 B, 40-59 C, 20-39 D and 0-19 F. Even with this lenient grading scale, lots of students were weeded out as future doctors.
Lets see the average score for AP physics C is 3.5 for calculus BC is 3.7 but APUSH is 2.6 and English literature is 2.8. Where is the evidence not anecdotes that STEM is harder than non STEM subjects In California the average score by Asians for AP US gov is 2.7 It takes a lot more to be a good lawyer than a good computer programmer.
@hebegebe you can find a lot more lawyers and business majors that can discuss Chaucer, pop music and gender studies than STEM majors who can do the same
@Ohiodad51 The biggest obstacle for Rs to win the White House back is basic demographics and its juxtsposition with the electoral college. Allow me to explain: if one were to take just the west coast and the mid-atlantic/NE seaboard, or about 16-17 states, one would have about 60% of the electoral college. Common thread to these states is that they are all historically D in presidential races. Moreover, when you add potential “play” states like MI, Ohio, Ill or Fl, it makes it all the more difficult for the Rs, as they have to deploy resources in all those states, and D can stratrgically move races.
So, while the Ds can run numerous strategies to the white house, the Rs have to almost win out in every state. Finally, the three biggest groups missing in the last election for Rs were as follows: college educated women, voters under 35, and people of color. By way of example, Trump would need about 43-45% percent of the latino vote to win, he currently is polling in the low single digits with this group. Also factoring into this, is that the 3 above mentioned groups live largely on the east and west coast…
@tiger1307, hard to believe you are unaware of this. Did you attend college outside the US? From the wikipedia article about grade inflation:
“There is significant variation in grading between different schools, and across disciplines. Between classes of schools, engineering schools grade lower by an average of 0.15 points, while public flagship schools grade somewhat higher. Across disciplines, science departments grade on average 0.4 points below humanities and 0.2 points below social sciences. While engineering schools grade lower on average, engineering departments grade comparably to social sciences departments, about 0.2 points above science departments. These differences between disciplines have been present for at least 40 years, and sparse earlier data suggests that they date back 70 years or more.”
The AP tests are not indicative of college grading practices.
As much as I’d like to agree with you, boolaHI, I think your math is a bit off. If you add the 3 Pacific coast states (CA, OR, WA, total 74 electoral votes) to the 6 New England states (CT, RI, MA, VT, NH, ME, total 33 electoral votes) and 5 mid-Atlantic states (NY, NJ, PA, DE, MD, total 76 electoral votes) plus the District of Columbia (3 electoral votes), you get 186 electoral votes, or about 35% of the 538-member electoral college—not 60% as you claim. Let’s add Hawaii (4 electoral votes) to the “safely Democratic” column. That gives you 190, or still (given rounding) 35% of the electoral vote.
Democrats win the White House only if they win several big Midwestern states, plus some additional Southern and Western states. In 2012, President Obama won 6 Midwestern states (OH, MI, IL, WI, MN, IA, total 80 electoral votes), 2 Southern states (VA and FL, total 42 electoral votes), and 3 interior Western states (CO, NM, NV, total 20 electoral votes), to give him a comfortable majority of 332 electoral votes (270 needed to win). But of these states, probably only Minnesota (10 electoral votes) is safely in the Democratic column. Illinois (20 electoral votes) has voted strongly Democratic in the last several Presidential elections, but it now has a Republican governor and the Democrats appear to be in disarray. If Illinois is a presidential battleground, the Democrats are in trouble. But let’s say Hillary wins Minnesota and Illinois. That still leaves her 50 electoral votes short of the presidency. It’s doable, but no sure thing. Ohio (18), Michigan (16), Wisconsin (10), and Iowa (6) all have Republican governors and Republican majorities in the state legislatures, so these are at best battleground states. Virginia (13) and Florida (29) are always battlegrounds. Colorado (9), New Mexico (5), and Nevada (6), while they remain the Democrats’ best prospects in the interior West, are no sure thing. So while it’s true that the Democratic nominee has many possible paths to the White House, it’s far from the sure thing that you posit.
In 2013, 476,277 AP/Lang and 385,576 AP/Lit exams were taken. Only 62,238 Physics C-M & E-M exams were taken in that same year. We’re talking about two completely different “pools” of students. Comparing the average scores is not instructive.
The “math-science death march” has convinced many a student that STEM is “boring” and that Political science is really their calling…nothing says boring like a D in Calculus… I-)
There are many ways to measure differences in the difficulty of courses (e.g., the median grade, the time required to get the median grade, etc.). At my institution, we generate data showing how leniently a department grades relative to other departments. Take the 2015 graduates and divide them by major. Then, for each major, calculate the graduates’ GPA within the major and outside the major. (Yes, we have to make adjustments for double majors, etc.) We then subtract the former from the latter. We get numbers ranging from +0.2 to -0.5. At one extreme, we have departments whose student get grades 0.2 higher outside the major, suggesting that the department grades rigorously. In others, they are giving away high grades. Other approaches would be more satisfying. For instance, one could control for the “ability” of the students in every class. (For those better versed in statistics than I, we could estimate student and course fixed effects, with the latter providing an estimate of how leniently courses are graded.) Perhaps we will do that down the road, but there will be push-back.
Some faculty members at Yale took a quick look at this issue when studying possible changes to their grading system. They found that the departments with the highest grades had the weakest students, as measured by the entering Academic Index:
http://yalecollege.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/2_Report%20from%20Ad%20Hoc%20Committee%20on%20Grading%5B2%5D.pdf
That is one reason why patterns in switching majors are informative.
@boolah, yes, the republican are not going to win the Atlantic seaboard or the West Coast. Nor are they ing to win demographics which are traditionally the Dems safest voting blocks. If the are Repubs are at all competitive with those groups, then we will be looking at another Reagan Mondale election, because the Dems support among the groups who actually decide elections will have evaporated.
I get the electoral college argument. I am just old and jaded enough to remember several of these shifts which were going to make it impossible for the party who just lost the White House to ever win it again. The same articles will be written again this time next year, no matter which party wins. I am just going by the straight historical trend. In the post WWII world, we tend to elect Presidents for two terms, and we tend to replace a President of one party with a President of another.
Plus as I mentioned the Senate’s composition plays a huge role in this.
@ohiodad51 yup, if the economy stays on its same course, it will be hard for any R, as it can have either a lag or projected effect. Finally, if Trump wins the nomination (which i am entirely dupious about) you can expect record turnout for the D side, as his form of rhetoric tends to galvanize folks.
Folks, please take your unrelated political discussion offline, before you shut down this thread.
A cynic would say that a large reason Trump is getting all of the national pub that he is is because he is seen as the best hope to gin up turn out among the disparate parts of the Obama coalition. Not that anyone would believe the media would try and help the Dems 
All of this is really only relevant here in the context of which way the Justices see the Court trending, and whether they believe their ultimate position benefits by waiting. My personal opinion is that the liberal wing would rather have a comprehensive decision here because 1) the Court has signaled that AA in general is “on the clock” and 2) to the extent there are any ideological changes in the Court in the next five years, it is at least slightly more likely the Court will grow more conservative rather than less given the composition of the Senate and the historical trends in Presidential elections.
Interesting tid bit I came across in the last couple days. The last Democratic President to appoint a Justice with a Republican Senate was in 1895.
Sure they were, by the professor. Even if the syllabus says, everyone that scores a 90+ earns an A, there is no way that any lower division STEM prof will write tests so that can actually happen. Instead, the prof writes the test to generate the median that he/she wants, or in reality is recommended by the Department.
My D’s Orgo professor even said the same thing. On one test, for example, the mean was a high 80. He even told the class, ‘don’t expect the next quiz to be so generous’…indeed, it was not: mean of 70. Thus, between the two the average was ~78, which was about his goal for the semester.
At the large publics, D’s and F’s are not uncommon, but extremely rare in the lit/hume disciplines.
btw: since you brought up AP scores, tiger, they count, but only for preparedness, not the point that you thought you are making. Since STEM courses have stricter grading patterns, does it not make sense that those who have taken AP Calc and done well, will be much, much better prepared in Frosh Calc over an underprepared high schooler who only had access to so-called college prep pre-calc/trig? In the first case, the student is essentially repeating the course – and will set the curve with decent work habits. The underprepared will have to work 2x hard just to catch up.
Not the relevant point, which is grad/prof school admissions. And for law school, GPA+LSAT is ~99% of the game. A year of Frosh C’s pretty essentially disqualifies that student from the really top law schools.
The Blue Wall electoral college argument is way overstated. The EC only matters when the popular vote is very very close. Bush/Gore difference was 0.5%. If either side wins the popular vote by more than that, the EC is irrelevant.
Also way overstated is the 3 terms in a row argument. That theory really doesn’t hold up to serious scrutiny either.
Having said that, all the wise guys (bookies, trading markets, quants like Nate Silver) have the presidential election at 60/40 D or more. Those sources historically are the best predictors of election outcomes at this point in the cycle. Those source also predict the GOP retains the Senate by just a few seats.
So the base assumption is that H Rod gets to replace Ginsburg with someone that can get through a sub-60 vote GOP majority in the Senate. Scalia isn’t going anywhere voluntarily regardless of who is in the WH.
The real intrigue will be Kennedy. He’s dead center. Does he prefer H Rod, Cruz or Trump to pick his replacement? Not entirely clear.
There is a NY Times op-ed today from a black astrophysicist who attempts to discredit mismatch theory in responding to John Roberts’ question: "What unique perspective does a minority student bring to a physics class?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/opinion/the-benefits-of-black-physics-students.html
IMO, she does exactly the opposite. She says that high school didn’t prepare her properly but that she thrived at Norfolk State University, a HBCU, before eventually getting a PhD from Yale. She somehow fails to make the connection that if she had been admitted to Yale right after high school, she most likely would have floundered there.
Instead, the “match” at Norfolk State University gave her the time to catch up to the students that were far better prepared right out of high school, but that she could equal when it was time for her PhD.
If you look at the stats of Norfolk State students, it is unlikely that any student at Norfolk State, whether a URM or not, could be admitted to Yale. I guess the fact that some of those Norfolk State students go on to Ivy League schools means that even if there can be a mismatch, it isn’t necessarily permanent.
One reason I’m skeptical about mismatch theory is that I don’t think most selective schools are compromising stats for URMs all that much. I don’t think (say) 200 points overall on the SAT are enough to suggest that somebody is academically too weak to succeed at a highly selective school. (I might feel differently about a high school transcript with a lot of Bs and some Cs, though.) If Harvard is taking URMs who would only be able to make it into Tufts without the consideration of race, I don’t see a big impact.
not sure anyone said that it was. Again, Sander’s thesis is about admission to law schools…for which cum GPA is paramount. A 3.9 from Directional Podunk State will beat a 3.6 from anywhere else every time (assuming same LSAT score).
However, there can also be the effect of students cherry-picking “easy A” courses for the out-of-major courses to get higher out-of-major GPAs, or students having greater ability and motivation in their majors to get higher in-major GPAs. In majors where there are fewer prerequisites and specific course requirements, students can more easily avoid difficult (for them, at least) courses in their major to get higher in-major GPAs. How are these confounding effects handled?