<p>Yeah, different states do weird things. For instance, in Michigan we don’t have Fs, we have Es.</p>
<p>I know that I took Engineering Calculus in the Honors program at UT which was much harder than just plain old Calc I and II, and the same thing when I took Vector Calc and Diff Eq. The y had picked out the better professors so we got a break on that but the class was taught from a graduate level class and we were expected to delve into the proofs and the and be able to work any problem without memorized solutions to the differential by applying the proof to get the answer no matter how complex the problem was. He was a math professor and did nor care that we would be using these formulas in the future to plug in numbers to find an answer to say the flow of water down a pipe and the force it created on the way down. He wanted us to be hard core math majors understanding things that were way above our level. When I got to diff eq and the principles he was trying to force upon us them were explained in a new light with far more knowledge (linear algebra, an engineering class, and a probabilities and stats class) the concepts my new professor presented (same ones that my freshman math prof wanted us to know) came into focus. I mad A’s in all my math classes but barely scraped by with a 92 and a 91 that first year. I can’t imagine if I didn’t get 4 points for that and someone who did NOT take engineering calc but business calc and did NOT take the HONORS version of that class I took got a 99 as her average and got an A+ while I got an A-. That is like comparing the smell of roses to the stink of ****. I can’t believe they do that at some schools because obviously not all classes are the same and some one with an easy curriculum that doesn’t require real taxing of the brain by learning new concepts and theorems and ways of understanding this world we live in. Instead, their curriculum requires something that hopefully they have learned long ago - how to read. Before everyone attacks me, I do realize that those degrees that require reading as the primary homework and function of their coursework also requires critical thinking - something that I do not believe has to be taught to you. It is something you simply apply. Are your morals not formed by the time you are 18? Do you not already understand the term ethics and what it means to be an ethical person? So, I think those degree plans primary requirement is a lot of reading and many time consuming hours writing papers backing up your formed opinion that was not taught to you in that class. So, Is an A+ is reading the better than an A- in physics where the class average is something like 45 demonstrating how hard the information is to grasp by the human mind - where something truly remarkable has been past from one person to another? I don’t think so. THe only way to make it even seem fair (and it’s still imperfect when you have student intentionally taking honors classes of the same class you would have to take only it’s harder but the grades they get are equal to the grade you get) is to get rid of the + and - system from all colleges so that GPAs can be seen as equivalent from school to school. No more will Nancy be valedictorian and have a 3.899 to Joe’s 3.687 where Joe never made a B and Nancy made 7 or 8 of them. She made some of those A+'s too but one was in physical fitness, the other in speech, most all of them were in her electives except one in her major, Freshman English. Joe was a in the Physics Honors program and those professors all graded on a curve because no one, and I mean no one, made a perfect score. The tests were intended that way and the high man of the curve was not going to be given an A+ even though it was him more times than not. Same with all the other science classes he took like thermodynamics and his upper division physics classes - there was no A +. He was the start of the Honors program though and he was the only one who made it through with straight A’s that should have been a 4.0. Nancy stole her valedictorian robe off the back of the man who never made below a 90. Her lowest B was an 84. Lucky for her those A+'s of hers walked that grade right up past his A- when all the averaging was done.</p>
<p>THE PLUS AND MINUS SYSTEM IS A DISSERVICE TO ALL STUDENTS. SOONER OR LATER YOU WILL BE ON THE LOSING END OF IT TOO.!!!</p>
<p>Long post that I didn’t read is long and I didn’t read it.</p>
<p>Is Sappho actaully Sakky?</p>
<p>just wondering how many people here skipped pre calc?</p>
<p>not me 10 char</p>
<p>There’s this neat convention called the “paragraph” that I highly recommend, Sappho!</p>
<p>Just work hard and everything will turn out fine in the end.</p>
<p>i skipped precalc so i could take calc AB and calc BC by senior year.</p>
Precalculus (Remedial): A+
Calculus 1: B-
This thread is 6 years old, let it stay peacefully dead.
Bleh - all my calc’s and diffeq were 5/10. Pass is 5/10, and it would be the rare individual that got an 8 and a unicorn that got a 9.
Better yet, the way the class was run… two tests, 50/50 of the grade each, 3 or 4 problems in 2 or 3 hours. 3 or 4 VERY hard problems, with no partial credit. Thankfully tuition was free and if you bombed the class you only had to retake the final :). I must have taken Diff Eq like 3-4 times.
I remember coming to the US and meeting my RA for the dorm floor, a very bright senior guy in engineering and supposedly the dorm’s go-to guy for hard math homework problems. I still remembered my last DiffEq test questions so I gave those to him. No luck.
Those who complain about US style calculus teaching in college haven’t seen the worst of it.
Calc I: C
Calc 2: C
Calc 3: A
FYI, I graduated with a math degree and did way better in my upper-divison courses.
I have returned to school two years out and am doing great in my calculus based engineering courses.
Calc 1: A
Calc 2: A
Cacl 3: B
Diff EQ: A
I seem to be the only person on Earth who found 3 much harder than 2.
Chemical engineering in case you’re wondering.
MODERATOR’S NOTE: Please use old threads for reference only. I am closing this thread.