<p>Short question. Why does UCB maintain A+ and A both at 4.0? Seems pretty stupid to me. There's absolutely no incentive to aim for A+. And it can potentially screw up average GPA. :(</p>
<p>Does it matter? Just be happy to even get that grade.</p>
<p>Absolutely no incentive? That’s definitely not true, at least for me, because A+'s feel so much better than A’s. </p>
<p>Although I do wish that Cal gave out 4.3 for A+'s just because I think A+'s are a much better indicator of mastery than A’s are. Most of the time you only need to know more than the other (mediocre) students in the class to get an A, whereas you really need to understand the material thoroughly to get an A+. Just my opinion.</p>
<p>^ I dunno. In classes that are heavily curved, I think you can get away with getting an A+ without having a very deep understanding of the material. For me, this has almost exclusively happened in science classes though.</p>
<p>@bbb360 and singh2010: It matters when someone like me needs to maintain a 3.8 GPA in Chemical Engineering at COC to maintain his scholarship. Getting a few A+ but potentially getting dragged down by other competitive/tough/grade-deflated courses and losing that scholarship isn’t going to make that few A+ feel better than A. </p>
<p>also my opinion is that this can contribute to grade deflation…</p>
<p>Not a current Cal student… but what about an A-? Does it not count as an A then?</p>
<p>from: [Grade</a> and Credit Code Definitions - Office Of The Registrar](<a href=“http://registrar.berkeley.edu/oar/gradeskey.html]Grade”>http://registrar.berkeley.edu/oar/gradeskey.html)</p>
<p>A+, A, A- 4.0, 4.0, 3.7 Excellent
B+, B, B- 3.3, 3.0, 2.7 Good
C+, C, C- 2.3, 2.0, 1.7 Fair
D+, D, D- 1.3, 1.0, .7 Barely passed</p>
<p>@misterb7k:
A+:4
A:4
A-: 3.7</p>
<p>for more go here: [Academic</a> Probation-GPA](<a href=“http://ls-probation.berkeley.edu/gpa.html]Academic”>http://ls-probation.berkeley.edu/gpa.html)</p>
<p>@trivolve: nice side commentary. lol.</p>
<p>i was 1 minute faster! lol</p>
<p>I see. In that case, I suppose it does matter. My parents pay for my stuff so I forgot there’s always people who work a ton harder to keep their scholarships and such.</p>
<p>@ Trivolve</p>
<p>I don’t know much about sophomore, junior, and senior years yet, but if you’re a decent student you shouldn’t have a problem keeping at least a 3.8 freshman year as a ChemE. From then on you can probably take summer school every year and then 13-14 unit semesters to try to maintain your gpa for the remaining 3 years or something. It’s definitely doable.</p>
<p>Somehow I imagine the grade whoring would be worse if A+ gave 4.3</p>
<p>^Agreed. 10char</p>
<p>yeah if one puts in the effort it’s certainly possible… i just feel that it’s not so fair as compared to other unis with the 4.3/4.5</p>
<p>well, there’s the whole issue with grade deflation (or other schools’ grade inflation), but did you know MIT has a GPA scale out of 5? But it doesn’t really mean anything in itself.</p>
<p>ya coz it can be converted to the 4.0 scale… though it would look impressive by itself :P</p>
<p>I have to say, 3.8 in ChemE isn’t going to be easy. I have friends who marvel at a 3.5. ChemE classes are curved to a B- until your junior year–then it’s a B average. Make sure you buffer accordingly with courses in other departments; don’t take too many technicals in a single semester. </p>
<p>If maintaining a certain average is your concern, why worry about A+'s–don’t bother trying to get them (to be honest, you probably won’t if you’re taking CoC classes, unless you are one of the few students who can score legit 90%'s on his exams). Just do enough to get A’s in your classes then, right? </p>
<p>True, it’s not fair that other universities award more GPA to A+'s while UC Berkeley doesn’t. But there was some reasoning of yours that led you to chose UC Berkeley knowing that it would be more difficult compared to those other schools, regardless of whether an A+ is worth more than an A. </p>
<p>If you ever do get A+'s, maybe you can talk to your scholarship people about factoring in the + if necessary. </p>
<p>Good luck. Welcome to CoC Chemical Engineering. If you stop by an AIChE meeting (AIChE = the ChemE student group), maybe I’ll meet you then.</p>
<p>well that is true i’ll have to tell the scholarship board to factor in the + grades. after all if MIT grades on a 5.0 scale, 3.8 would be comparatively pretty easy =D. see you all around in sept.</p>