I’ve deleted several posts which were primarily responses to another deleted post.
The thread on Race in College Admissions has been pinned. The latest iteration of it can be found here. (You will notice it was started in 2015 and has been updated continually since then.) That’s the best place to continue discussions of race.
Let’s keep this thread civilized and on topic. Thanks for cooperating.
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/t/race-in-college-applications-faq-discussion-13
Some students do seem to be entitled these days, how over we call them. After having received inflated grades in high schools, and perhaps in other courses in college, they may feel that almost anyone should be entitled to receive at least a B in any class in college. A sign of the times, as the title of the thread suggests? They forget why they are in college: to learn and be challenged intellectually. I’m in the camp that all college courses should be made more challenging. That’s how to bring out the best in every student. If a student can go through her/his years in college without having been challenged and having overcome those challenges, s/he probably shouldn’t have gone to college in the first place.
Didn’t know about the Brandeis program - I see it’s been running for more than 50 years and looks to be quite successful.
Jones gave an interview to Princeton student newspaper.
The most interesting points in the interview, in my opinion are that:
Very few students actually watched the zoom lectures or attended office hours. From that I conclude that struggling students were not actually interested in accomodations to learn the material, merely getting their grade raised;
Students in class the prior year had directly presented Jones with a petition and he made some changes based thereon. He was never given that opportunity in the most recent case.
Some students have struggled in his class, but say it was worth it
I am curious about these recorded lectures. Are these publicly available to watch? I want to see what this vaunted OC course is all about.
I would not expect them to be publicly available. Perhaps coursera or EdX has an orgo class online.
I did find MIT offers its entire course online-browse there to see the syllabus, lecture notes, exams, problem sets-along with study tips that say attendance is absolutely crucial. Seems like this would help anyone in any orgo class, and it is free.
Unless part of an EdX course, videos are generally restricted to students registered in the course.
“When NYU students’ average dropped below the 65 percent that is customary for Jones’s class, the school did not renew his contract. Jones has filed a grievance against the school for wrongful termination.”
Does that mean that the average final grade
for his organic chemistry class was < 65%?
I can’t find the conversion to a letter grade equivalent for the main campus. But according to NYU London, that would be a failing grade without any adjustment.
NYU London uses the following scale of numerical equivalents to letter grades:
A=93-100
A-=90-92
B+=87-89
B=84-86
B-=80-83
C+=77-79
C=74-76
C-=70-73
D+=67-69
D=65-66
F=below 65
Well, in view of prior posts indicating 30% of the class got As and 40% got Bs, I assume he curved the results.
At least in the past, getting 55% of the questions right on the AP Physics C E&M exam qualified for the highest score, a 5.
This doesn’t make sense to me. If you are curving the result, why does the university use the raw score as the criterion not to renew his contract?
No idea. It doesn’t seem relevant. Perhaps it is just an excuse for the action.
That’s the average, which would be significantly lowered by those students with only single digits or zeros in this class.
That would be hard to do statistically. In a class of 100 students, it would require 65 students to have perfect scores and 35 students to have 0 scores to bring down the class average to 65%.
Probably few had perfect scores in this class. If there were unusual proportion of very low scores, the average would come down significantly.
True. But it’s likely very few students also scored a 0 for the entire course.
My D18 took Orgo at Michigan. Just an FYI.
They hand out a syllabus, which explains the grading policy (not big news obviously). From what I remember, all Orgo classes have the same rough grading policy as follows:
Mean 63-65%
80-100% = the “A/A-/B+”-range
60-80% = the “B+/B/B-/C+” range
45-60% = the “C+/C/C-” range
Each class can be different and adjustments are made, if needed.
I understand that point. But the article stated the university took action after the raw score dropped below 65%. It doesn’t explain the reasoning and the reader is left to fill in the blanks. Would the university end the professor’s contract if a 65% average was curved to a B letter grade?
In terms of how I view this issue, it makes a big difference if the class average was in the B range or F range.
If 70% got A or B, doesnt that mean the class average was in the B range?