<p>Cyclone, I disagree that students are not weeded out. I’ve spoken to people in academics and the concensus is that the profs for the calc, chem, and physics courses are told to fail a certain percentage of students by the engineering department. These courses act like a filter. I don’t think this is due to lack of faculty or facilities either. Departments don’t frown on the idea of expanding. I think it boils down to engineering faculty wanting to deal with quality students in upper level courses and also, as I’ve said, so the program graduates quality engineers.</p>
<p>Moreover, I think that weeding out is done intentionally by departments.</p>
<p>ME 76, still that number of 30-50%, I don’t think that’s people that were forced out as much as it is people that dropped out because they’re GPA’s are fugly…but I don’t have any way to confirm this or not. </p>
<p>I just think engineering already requires an amount of commitment that makes actively ‘weeding out’ arbitrary, there is no need for dept’s to ‘weed out’ as it already happens naturally due to the high standards and nature of the curriculum of study…you know what I’m trying to say, 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>That’s arbitrary and relative. Ever taken a Calculus class at a community college? How about an unknown university? How about at Harvard? What’s the difference? It’s all calculus isn’t it… </p>
<p>I went from a CC to Purdue. Only took Calc 1 at CC before transferring, there’s a big difference - and it’s not just in the material. In fact, I didn’t really find the level of education, or the material at a CC to be that much different. </p>
<p>The difference is in the mostly predefined curves at Purdue. The profs say there is not pre-selected cutoff for an A,B,C… etc… But generally what they mean is there’s no grade percentage cutoffs, however, there’s usually some percentile cutoff that’s roughly the same from year to year. It’s this kind of selection criterea that is inherently biased, the dept arbitrarily picks some percentage of students that will fail. The exams are designed to test you on problems that are not necessarily even relative to succeeding in engineering. In general, I’d say that a good amount of the people that fail calculus/physics/chem still have enough basic knowledge of those subjects to make it through most engineering courses. In fact, I’d even go a step further and say that quite a few practicing engineers don’t know more calculus than the students who fail. There are classes where 50% of the students fail, there’s no way you can convince me that 50% of the students are just poor students… unintelligent, or otherwise.</p>
<p>Say you have a strong year and a weak year. As in, you would give identical tests both years, and one year the average was a 75% and the following it was a 65%. If the class is graded on a curve that’s redone ever year, the students failing in the 75% year likely did better than the students failing in the 65% year.</p>
<p>I know this happened to me a few times in undergrad. Historically the cutoff for an A would be 80% or so, and tests were no easier my year than others, but our averages were considerably higher since we were a “good” year, so the curve got set at a higher cutoff. I got boned by the change in the curve twice. :mad:</p>
<p>^ Wow, story of last semester. A new professor was teaching and no one had any idea about his exam patterns. The guy went crazy and assigned us problems he came across in his career. Imagine what kinda of exam a phd with 35 years of circuit design experience will make. It was a bad course for me( in terms of grade) although I did learn a lot. </p>
<p>This semester, the first midterm had an average of 61 compared to 23 when I was taking it! Why? because most of his material is now spread around and the new students have a better idea of what to expect. Those who failed the first time are retaking the class this semester and they too are helping by sharing their previous quizzes/homeworks. I dont know if the system of education is to blame or the department/professor. Any changes now won’t matter anyway, I’m not getting a better grade.</p>
<p>StudentA had the lowest grade in the class and StudentD had the highest. Lets say Im the dept head and I now decide that the cutoff for an F is 34%. Nobody fails. Now lets say I decide the cutoff for an F is 50%, now half of the students fail. I just caused half of the students to fail. The arbitrary percentile that I chose caused students to fail, not the students themselves, thats how a curve works. If you predefine the grading system such that any score below 50% will earn a failing grade, then the students cause themselves to fail if they score under that. </p>
<p>What if everybody scores between an 80-100%? Because I decide that 50% of students will automatically fail the exam, theoretically students that got 80% of the material right would fail </p>
<p>To highlight an even more interesting fact, Id ask you to go read the study that I posted near the beginning of this thread. Over the roughly 30 year period of the study they found that on average, judging by SAT math scores, a student who earned an A in the Spring semester had a very high probability of failing the fall semester offering of the same class. </p>
<p>Also, like the previous poster mentioned, and like the Spring/Fall example highlights you cant base one years scores and relate them to another. One test may ask a similar concept in a way that is harder to understand. One test may just be harder than another test. Students will circulate past exams which allow them to study more relevant material. One group of students coming through the program might be stronger than another. The list goes on and on </p>
<p>The fact is that, for whatever reason, the depts. Do decide to fail a certain number/percentage of students, this is not just because of the material.</p>
<p>still, why did student A have score lower than his/her peers in the class? Yes there will have to be some difference in grades, but why did student A score 30% lower than Student D? </p>
<p>Have you had a class where if you got an 80% it was an F? you actually think this happens?</p>
<p>One of my friends had a class where a 96% was the cutoff for an A, and something like a 90% was a cutoff for a B. One friend saw he had a 98% going into the final project and slacked off a bit, and wound up bringing his grade down to a 95%. Thought he was safe until the curve came out!</p>
<p>(I didn’t know anyone else in the class, so no clue what sort of grades other people got.)</p>
<p>I did have an experience with classes being taught really unevenly, though. I took a quantum class a year ahead of the rest of my friends. The class was maybe 8 people large with everyone but me being a physics major. The class was taught at a pretty decent pace and tests were tough. The following year all of my friends take the class, about 20 people in it, most of them engineers, and the professor gives easier tests, makes the final optional and open book, and they didn’t get nearly as far with the material (same professor). While I didn’t get the class, my high B would have very likely been an A if I had taken it a year later.</p>
<p>What kind of question is this? You asked me illustrate how the curve was causing people to fail, so I did. </p>
<p>I can’t attempt to describe the nearly endless number of reasons that could account for StudentD’s lower score. On top of this, the reason one student scores lower than another has no relevance in determining if that student should fail.</p>
<p>Lol… Define common sense, your whole argument here seriously lacks any substance, and you’ve failed to explain your logic.</p>
<p>Your argument is that the material itself decides who will pass, but that’s ridiculous because of all the examples I gave above that support the contrary. Roughly the same material is taught in calculus all over the country, yet ever program has different ratios of students that pass the class, different grade distributions, etc. Thus, my argument is that the program determines who will pass the class…</p>
<p>Then you switch your argument to say that now it’s because some students score lower on a test that others. Well, how about the fact that students at the same university taking a course in the Spring and earning an A have a high probability of taking the course in the Fall and failing? That doesn’t bode well for your argument at all…
On top of this, in a theoretical sense your argument fails miserably - because the nature of a curve is that the lower percentiles will fail no matter what, even if they know a considerable amount of the material tested.</p>
<p>So, I leave it to you to explain your logic, because it doesn’t seem like common sense to me.</p>
<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…I said material taught with ‘high standards’…I agree it’s relative, Stanford does have higher standards than community college.</p>
<p>Yes, if a student scores much lower than others they should receive a lower grade than the others, any further explanation of this is just plain ridiculous</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>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>
I think this is the important part of the argument; not all calculus classes are taught the same. There is a reason why GT students have a tough time with Calc their first year versus a relatively easy math class at a place like GA State. Definitely different rigor, however most colleges require you to take Calculus anyway. Why would you want to weed people out of a general class? That seems to be counterproductive, though I suppose in the case of GT and their high acceptance rate, this may be an exception (they admit lots of people, and only the people who can cut it stay, that is what I’m referring to). Still, the original point stands.</p>
<p>So then the key word to your whole argument is standards?</p>
<p>Ok, but thats relative what are high standards? </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, I referred to the link I posted on this thread </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I dont understand how this isnt 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 Im 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 isnt 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 were on the same page but different departments do intentionally weed different numbers of students out.</p>
<p>I think the point is, no matter what school you go to, your grade is largely determined by your score relative to other students in the class. Difficulty of the class is determined by the school.</p>
<p>/thread?</p>
<p>oh wait also have to go with the “they go out of their way to screw you over” gatech taught me first-hand</p>
<p>This is a really interesting topic and I think I’m going to throw my name into the gautlet on this one. Say all of this is true with what Purduefrank is saying. Why go to the top 10 school then? I would say that a majority of people on this forum who went to a top 10 school came from OOS and are paying an OOS tuition. Why not instead head to your stateU’s engineering program that might only be a top 30 school as apposed to a top 10 school. You have a better chance of graduating without debt and more then likely standarts will be lower bettering your chances of passing instead of failing. You still have a great shot at getting a solid job in your field from a top 30 school. Is it not better to get the degree even if its not from GT or Purdue as a apposed to getting in debt, getting weeded out when you potentionally could have been very good at what you were studying and instead become a history major with no direction and mounds of bills lining up your dorm room? A very extreme scenario but one that could apply in some sense to many students. In the end does it come down to rolling the dice on your future. Yah you could be at the top of your class at GT, but the chances are a lot better that it would happen at your State U.</p>