<p>I heard that this school grades harshly because there is a lot of curve on many courses, including tough sciences. I do not understand this. If one’s grade is curved, why do you call it “harsh?”
If anyone know anything detailed about this please unzip your mind and reveal your explanations. Thanks!</p>
<p>Not sure on what Berkeley does, but a "harsh curve" in general is not hard to do. Bell Curve only allows for a few A's, a handful of Bs, and the rest Cs, Ds, and Fs, so if they used that curve it would be very harsh.</p>
<p>BackToReality</p>
<p>The curving, by itself, is not what makes it hard. It's where the curve is placed that makes the grading harsh or not. If the curve is placed such that the average grade is an A, and the worst grade you can get is an A-, then that is obviously a very very easy curve. However, if the curve is placed such that lots of students get D's and F's, then that is a very harsh curve. And there are plenty such harsh-curved classes at Berkeley, especially in engineering.</p>
<p>Correct me if I am wrong, but I would assume that the curve at Berkley is the same as that at UCLA.</p>
<p>So the curve goes like this:</p>
<p>top 15% = A (including A-)
next 25% = B
next 40% = C</p>
<p>and the remaining.</p>
<p>So, berkeley's grading system is based on relative curve? For example, if all students get 95% on the course except one who got a 90% in it, will this student get an "F?"</p>
<p>No, not that extreme.</p>
<p>In a classroom of more than 50, 60 students, the relative curve makes sense and can be enforced. </p>
<p>However, in a classroom of 10, 15 students, professors usually go easy on the students by giving them the "graduate level" curve. Well, at least, small classes at UCLA is like this.</p>
<p>Graduate Level Curve</p>
<p>30% = A
40% = B
30 %= C</p>
<p>or something along the line of this.</p>
<p>
[quote]
top 15% = A (including A-)
next 25% = B
next 40% = C
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Actually, I would say that for the lower-division courses, especially for the weeders, you are missing two key words. The two words are: "or lower". For example.</p>
<p>top 15% = A (including A-)
next 25% = B
next 40% = C OR LOWER</p>
<p>And when I say "or lower", I really do mean that. For example, there are courses at Berkeley, particularly the early weeders, where you can study hard, do all the work, show up to all the classes, and still get an F. That's right - an 'F'. There are courses at Berkeley where the profs feel absolutely no remorse whatsoever in tagging people with F grades. </p>
<p>Now, to cool0215, your scenario could theoretically happen. But it usually doesn't simply because the weeder courses won't have exams where the mean (the average test score) is in the 90's. Usually, in these classes, the means will hover around 50%. But your general thinking is correct, in the sense that if you got the lowest score in the class (whatever that score happens to be), you may indeed be looking at a D or an F.</p>
<p>Now, if all this curving scares you, well, let me tell you a story. I knew a guy who once scored a 30% on an exam. Did he cry? Not at all - in fact, he celebrated. Why? Because the test mean was a 25%. So he basically didn't know anything on the exam. But nobody else knew anything either, and so relatively speaking, he got an 'A', because while he knew almost nothing, at least he knew more than most of the rest of the class did. And in fact, the prof was so ticked off by the performance of the class that she basically wanted to give everybody an 'F'. What stopped her was that she had specifically said in her syllabus that the class was going to be curved, such that the top X% would get decent grades, and she couldn't change her own rules in midstream. Hence, in this class, the curve was actually a good thing (a very good thing).</p>
<p>MY DD is a science major at another UC, she had one chem class where the lowest A was a 97% and another chem class where the lowest A was 44%. It's pretty lousy to get a 95% and get a B; furthermore, it is really lousy to receive an A, but have to take a knowledge level of 44% on to the next chem class in the series!</p>
<p>These are the two extremes she has seen and at which she was amazed. It seems that it would be better (as in the humanities) to allow the possiblity that all students could master the material and that all students need a basic level of proficiency to be successful in the subject.</p>
<p>Science majors have many weeders- you must generally repeat any course in which you have received a C- or less if you wish to proceed to the next course in the series or any coursefor which your class was a prerequisite. Interstingly, after weeding every one out, theoretically, the upper division classes still grade on a curve, we don't know....doesn't this mean people will continually be failing, even as seniors! We do not yet know how this will work in reality, as she is not there yet.</p>
<p>Her social science roomamte has tough classes, but those students maintain a muich better GPA! Also, my DDs friends at private schools have amazing GPAs compared to UC science GPAs. My advice, be at the top of the curve!</p>
<p>to the original poster, you may be confusing college curves with HS curves, where sometimes the teacher will just raise everyone's grade by a certain amt of pts or so. in college they recenter the entire grading scale based on the average.</p>
<p>Most engineering programs use "weeder" courses to drop kids who can't cut it, like 2nd and 3rd semester calc and chemistry, because most eng students take these freshman year. I go to University of Wisconsin and there were about 300 people in my 2nd semster calc class. The first exam I sumthing like a 35% on and the average was 25% so i got an A. There was still 1 person with a 97% on the exam, but the majority of the class did bad. This is very similar to sakky's experience. Now that I have started taking some 300 and one 400 level course, not much has changed. I think that our curves are a little more generous as in DA's example, but still not quite that good. In my 400 level course there are only 25 people in the class, so its hard to get an A when only 5 or so are being given out. The other problem is that UW gives out AB's which are weighted as a 3.5. Good for people just over a B, but bad for people ranked 6th or 7th in the class-me. I can't speak directly for Berkeley, but I have heard that this situation is similar for most colleges with large engineering programs. Its unfortunate that they can't grade on some predeterminted scale, but they feel the need to weed people out somehow</p>