<p>For typical finance and business classes at Wharton, what is the average grade? Are we talking B/B+/B-? Is there a strict curve, or does the professor have the discretion to curve to whatever grade he/she wants? </p>
<p>How about for CAS classes, like calc, hard sciences, etc? </p>
<p>bump any current students have any inputs?</p>
<p>B-/C+ for intro science and math courses generally. </p>
<p>Science and (most) math courses are at the CAS. The last post (B-/C+) is not the likely case.</p>
<p>I wish the B-/C+ curve were “not likely.” I am a junior at the University of Pennsylvania and the hell curve is my reality. </p>
<p>The only department that would even come close to curving to a B- is the chem department in the premed courses. The chem department has notorious harsh grading. Even math, physics, bio and Econ wouldn’t do that. Most of the CAS science/Econ/math classes curve to a B or B+. Econ most definitely does not curve to a B-/C+.
Honestly, I think curving to a B+ is perfectly fair assuming around 30% As. I feel like Penn has one of the most realistic grading scheme in the Ivys, it’s not punitive for the most part but not everyone gets As which should be the case.</p>
<p>The Wharton curve is basically the same for the sciences (except for chem) at CAS. People can complain about it all they want but I think it is very fair. </p>
<p>@Poeme or anyone who wishes to answer:</p>
<p>So, for a typical Penn class is the curve something like: 30% A’s, 50% B’s and 20% C’s?</p>
<p>I disagree. This article states that Biol121 also curves to C/ C+.
<a href=“The Half of It | Broken by the curve | The Daily Pennsylvanian”>The Half of It | Broken by the curve | The Daily Pennsylvanian;
<p>And I seriously doubt MATH104 curved to a B+. There’s a reason why Penn students hate that class. </p>
<p>MATH104 always has this classwide curve: <a href=“http://hans.math.upenn.edu/~rimmer/math104/math-104-syllabus.pdf”>http://hans.math.upenn.edu/~rimmer/math104/math-104-syllabus.pdf</a></p>
<p>I personally consider Penn’s pre-med grading schemes deflationary and unnecessarily stressful, and its professors not particularly helpful, and so I do not recommend. There’s a reason why medical schools accept Penn students with lower gpas than the national average, and that is not because the Penn grading system is an accurate measure of how knowledgeable the student is compared to other students in America. </p>
<p>I said B/B+ not a B+. Courses like Math 104, Chem 101 and possibly a few other premed courses are most likely curved to a B. Biol 121 is more along the lines with orgo which is curved to a C+ at the very lowest. It is most definitely not curved to a C. I have a very large number of friends in Vagelos MLS who have taken these classes with premeds (and have very strong opinions about Penn’s premeds as a group). </p>
<p>Penn’s pre med grading scheme is no more deflationary than places like Chicago, Michigan, or Berkeley. Do you really think the students at Penn are that much better? The only reason people think there is grade deflation at Penn is because many of the other Ivys (Brown, Yale, and Harvard being prime offenders) are so outrageously inflated.</p>
<p>The issue with the pre med curriculum does not so much have to do with the grading as it has to do with admissions criteria. The obsession with GPA and MCAT scores discourages people from taking more challenging classes/majors (although I feel like the people in majors like physics and biophysics I know have all done really great in med school admissions even though the coursework is much harder than say bio) and encourages grade grubbing. </p>
<p>Unlike PhD programs who value your ability to make intellectual contributions, med school admissions value students ability to memorize and do well on tests. This leads to med schools being filled with students who are great at rote learning but are really not that smart as well as students who are book smart but do not have the interpersonal skills to be doctors.</p>
<p>For Wharton intro classes, the grading scheme is pretty much uniform, which is a good thing. Your competition for on-campus recruiting will be other Wharton students, so it’s good that GPA is fairly comparable between different classes/professors based on your relative standing in the class.</p>
<p>The percentages may vary slightly class to class, but I can tell you that for OPIM 101 the current percentages are: 5% A+, 12% A, 18% A-, 25% B+, 20% B, 10% B-, 7% C+, 3% C or lower.</p>
<p>So top 17% get a 4.0, top 35% get 3.7+, and top 60% of the class have 3.3+. Assuming the 3% C or lower are all C’s, the weighted average GPA in OPIM 101 is a 3.26, or roughly a 3.3/B+. </p>
<p>There will be much more variability in college classes than in Wharton classes. The curve for upper level Wharton classes will generally be slightly more favorable than the intro classes like OPIM. I’ve seen 40% A/A-.</p>
<p>For Wharton its about a curve to a B and for hard sciences its B or B-/C+</p>
<p>I think the Wharton curve is actually closer to a B+. It’s definitely not as bad as people make it out to be. I have friends in CAS who have taken finance classes who have said they were actually not hard at all. They were physics majors though so their math skills were way superior to the average Wharton student.</p>
<p>My son said the general curve is about a B.
Poeme, there are many Wharton classes that are not open to CAS students and the ones that are open are more intro courses and may not be curved. Some of the more competitive courses like OPIM are only for Wharton students.
Unless you take all your classes at Wharton, you won’t know.</p>
<p>Some MBA students take basic intro classes with Wharton undergrads, and they have their own curve.</p>
<p>OP, I don’t think you could compare the curves.
Only Wharton juniors and seniors can have a better idea of the curve because they’ve taken most of the core curriculum and the curves people refer to are the core curriculum curves because there are around 20 concentrations at Wharton. It’s just not only about finance.
Even in CAS, there are so many departments and people assume that STEM curves are lower than humanities which may or may not be the case. In addition, each professors grade differently.
There’s no point in generalizing.</p>
<p>Well regardless of the exact curves, a lot of people of overly concerned with them and should spend more time on trying to understand the material rather than attempting to regurgitate it.</p>
<p>@cbreeze, all of the STEM classes, (save for grad classes) I have taken have had a significantly lower average grade than the humanities classes I have taken. In the physical sciences and math, you have problem sets
due each week and graded on correctness. From what I have heard about some Wharton classes, the problem sets are often graded by completeness and only take a few hours. I easily could spend 10 hours on my problem sets each week. While it’s true that the humanities classes have a ton of reading, many students get away with not doing a lot of it. Additionally, papers are not assigned that frequently from what it seems. You could absolutely not get away with not doing the problem sets in my classes.</p>
<p>Regardless, the constant complaints about the Wharton curve bother me because these students can be incredibly elitist and condescending towards students in other majors.</p>
<p>Poeme: So it sounds like the SEAS classes have a tougher curve than Wharton, but the Wharton students do more complaining?</p>
<p>I’ve seen what the Wharton curve is doing to my D. It’s pretty wicked to take kids who maybe never got a B in their lives and subject them to something to harsh but I also see it stirring the competitive juices as well.</p>
<p>I’m not against the curve but it’s clearly shocking for some students.</p>
<p>@Madaboutx: The standard Wharton curve is honestly pretty generous. I outlined the OPIM 101 curve earlier, which is roughly what you can expect to encounter in core classes. The weighted average GPA among those classes is 3.26, or roughly 3.3/B+. Upper-level concentration classes may have more generous curves. This leads to a situation where the average Wharton student upon graduation has a GPA in the 3.4-3.5 range [that’s only a guess, but reasonable]. Would you really want the average GPA to be >3.4/3.5? At that point I think it loses all meaning.</p>
<p>You mention giving students a B as harsh - roughly 60% of students in core classes are getting a B+ or higher. To get a B, you only need to outscore the bottom 20% of the class.</p>
<p>Maybe I exaggerated a bit. A little hyperbole.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s truly harsh from the perspective of most people. I think that from the point of view of kids who were valedictorians, 3.9 GPA, king of world type A personality students that the curve can be pretty humbling and the first time for some kids to really have to work for a B after years of As coming fairly easy even in AP classes.</p>
<p>A perspective that 97% of us don’t share so maybe it sounds a little out of touch with reality.</p>
<p>@Madaboutx it’s not harsh for a kid to have to experience having to work hard for a B, it’s reality. Getting a B in a class doesn’t mean that you aren’t smart or can’t later master the material, it just means that you didn’t do as well as you wanted on the exams/assignments for a class. The sooner students learn this the better. If you really want to achieve great things, you will have to be able to conquer many obstacles in your way. The sooner you can learn how to do this the better.</p>
<p>My high school did not inflate grades, in fact I was in a math class that led to Calc BC junior year which only 40 students out of the 1000 students in my year took. Despite these students being some of the very best math students in the school, my teacher freshman year gave very few As and even Cs and Ds! Did it make me feel insecure when I didn’t get an A in freshman year math? Absolutely, it made me think I was horrible at math. This obviously had no basis in reality given I majored in physics at Penn and even minored in math. What was really going on was that the rate I processed information was no where near fast enough to finish the test. </p>
<p>While it was very discouraging to experience this my freshman year, it just made me stronger and more resilient. A lot of the students here seem to lack that or don’t learn it until later on.</p>