<p>I knwo that about roughly 50% of the grades given at Harvard are A and A-. Some other schools grade on a curve and only 15% of the students get A or A-. Does anybody know what percent of Rice grades are A and A-.</p>
<p>i second this question</p>
<p>I've heard that there is no set distribution of grades at Rice, yet I'm not quite certain what the average is anyway. I think for humanities courses it is pretty easy to get an A or at least a B/B+, whereas sciences maybe B is average, I'm guessing.</p>
<p>Clendenator, are you an S/E? Because in my experience it is not pretty easy to get an A in most Social Sciences/Humanities classes.</p>
<p>I have no idea. I'm actually class of '11 and I'm just regurgitating things I've read from other people <em>hides face in embarassment</em></p>
<p>humanities/social sciences are underrated; they are much harder than people think. the thing with them is that many of the profs dont give As whereas in the sciences it is very possible to get an A+ if you know your stuff. some humanities/social science classes simply have a cut off at an A- or even a B+.</p>
<p>True. I'm in a PoliSci class right now where the average grade is a C+/B-.</p>
<p>Are you asking because you are worried that you won't do well at Rice, or that you will cut off your options for grad school /med school / law school because of tough grading? If so, please note that kids at Rice get in to med school and law school and grad school at very, very good rates; that lets you know that either there isn't any serious grade deflation, or there is but grad schools know the value of a gpas at Rice. In regards to jobs, in my DS's possible department-to-be, all the kids who gradated with that degree and wanted jobs in that field -got jobs in that field this year. :)</p>
<p>grades are all relative. However, some schools and employer have minimum GPA requriements. I know it is not fair. However, we have to face it. It would be much easier if all schools use the same grade scale.</p>
<p>Does anyone know anything about the grading in the Econ and/or English departments? Thanks.</p>
<p>I don't really know about ECON but I am an English major and it is tough. In high school I never scored below at least a 95% on major essays. At Rice however, I am truly happy whenever I can get a B+ or A-. Usually I write the essay, revise it, talk to the professor about it, revise again, have friends read it, make final revisions. This process takes a LOT of time but it does help a lot. Also you will run into professors who will not give above around a B unless it is a truly amazing essay.</p>
<p>The grading in the econ department tends to follow an interesting two hump distribution, with one concentration of As/B+ and another at the lower end, with the lower end comprised of varsity athletes (I've never seen the actual data on this, I'm just going on my observations and what professors have told me), resulting in an unrepresentative A for the department.
Grades vary a lot by class - in some classes, an A is easy enough to get assuming you put a reasonable amount of effort into it, while some others (Econometrics, I hear, though haven't experienced yet) merely passing is the goal for most people. For the most part, if you go to class, study, and put in some effort, it's easy enough to get at least a B.</p>
<p>The grading curve for biosciences (premed) centers around a B/B-. Humanities courses are less likely to use a straight curve, as they vary widely depending upon professor. If you find out which professors you can write well for, a humanities major might be relatively easy, but you won't know until you finish a course with him/her. Additionally, it is very difficult to get an A+ in most science courses; this generally only happens to the top 1 or 2 students in a large lecture course that might have anywhere from 50-100 or more students. Science and engineering gpa's are almost universally lower than social science/ humanities gpa's at Rice, and everyone (grad schools, employers) generally recognizes that a 3.7 or 3.8 in an engineering major is much more difficult to attain than the same gpa in social sciences or humanities.</p>
<p>jjjjj you have to elaborate. i have been in some very easy humanities/social science classes (archaeology, linguistics, roman civ, cog psych, intro phil, phil logic). the foreign language courses (german, latin) were pretty much A's on lock. i think there is some harder-than-needed grading in intro econs, but other than that i am not convinced that humanities/social science is even close to the difficulty of math/sci/engineering. in my opinion they are on a completely different level. </p>
<p>the average gpa is around a 3.3 i think, but this does not really useful for comparison with other schools because of different student bodies.</p>
<p>if you go class by class, in both the poli and econ departments, there are a number of classes where you simply dont get an a.</p>
<p>like i said, i know of the intro econs, and then there is stoll.. what else did you have in mind?</p>
<p>You won't get an A in Stoll's classes, but he's an absolutely amazing professor.</p>
<p>so would you guys say that there is a slight grade inflation at Rice? or not really?</p>
<p>Not really.</p>
<p>Why are the intro Econ courses so hard?</p>
<p>Does it get easier for Econ majors after the first few intro courses?</p>