They go out the way to screw you over

[purduefrank]

<p>

I did not say that the material itself decides who will do well and who won’t, so I’m not going to respond to that, read more carefully

</p>

<p>

you don’t need to actively weed out the lower quality students in a calculus class, the lazy to decent students are going to fail anyways because it’s chess it ain’t checkers! A business program would need to weed out, because the inherent difficulty of business is so low the curriculum wouldn’t suffice to get rid of low quality students…I don’t know how else to say this?</p>

<p>Moreover, engineering dept’s don’t need to attempt to ‘weed out’, A year of Calc, physics , and chem combined will 10x over take care of that…as long as 'standard’s are being kept.

</p>

<p>So then the key word to your whole argument is “standards”?</p>

<p>Ok, but that’s relative – what are high standards? </p>

<p>

Are you saying if student x takes a class for the first time in the spring and gets an A, had that same student taken it in the fall they would have gotten an F??

</p>

<p>Yes, I referred to the link I posted on this thread…</p>

<p>

I’d like to see where this conversation goes before I reply to your argument that the ‘nature of the curve’ ensures that x students will fail no matter what

</p>

<p>I don’t understand how this isn’t clear. A curve, is determined by how well the students do. Normally the goal of a curve is to get a normal distribution of grades; A,B,C,D,F. The cutoffs for the curve are determined by the department/professor. So, the main point I’m trying to bring across here is that people are going to fail no matter what… Everybody in the class could be brilliant, do well on the exam, but the lower percentiles will still fail – that, is the nature of a curve.</p>

<p>This really isn’t worth a lot of thought lol… Departments determine how many students will pass, not the classes, material, or anything else. If these are the standards you speak of, then we’re on the same page… but different departments do intentionally weed different numbers of students out.</p>