Why doesn't Berkeley give 4.3s for A+?

Colleges & Universities A-Z University of California - Berkeley
1

<p>Any guess? It seems most private schools award 4.3s for A+s and it makes sense as an A+ is harder to achieve than an A.</p>

2

<p>from wikipedia:

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<p><a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_North_America[/url]”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_grading_in_North_America&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>well, I think it’s a double standard</p>

<p>you either grant bonus/penalty for +/- and deal with the 4.3 “possible” scale,</p>

<p>or you stick to A/B/C on a 4.0 scale</p>

4

<p>Some graduate schools give A+s the extra boost however, such as law schools.</p>

5

<p>So most law schools (including top ones, Harvard etc) would recalculate my Cal GPA, to factor the A+ boost? Do you have a source for that?</p>

6

<p>^^^ [LSAC</a> - Frequently Asked Questions - Credential Assembly Service (CAS)](<a href=“http://www.lsac.org/JD/Help/faqs-cas.asp#gpa-different]LSAC”>http://www.lsac.org/JD/Help/faqs-cas.asp#gpa-different)</p>

7

<p>Rewarding students for A+s incentivizes them to spend time studying instead of improving their lives in more efficient ways.</p>

8

<p>@caltanner- Yes It would, check out the aforementioned LSAC link.</p>

<p>Keep in mind that most law schools (except Yale, Stanford, and Berkeley) emphasize the LSAT over GPA anyways.</p>

9

<p>Good to know thanks</p>

10

<p>

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<p>I heartily agree.</p>

11

<p>It begs the question on whether an A+ really should make up for 1/3 of a grade elsewhere.</p>

<p>If you get an A in a class, that means you’ve mastered it. A+ just means that you went beyond, but is it actually fair that your GPA reflects it?</p>

12

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<p>isn’t your GPA supposed to reflect your accomplishment? why should a GPA reflect the student’s effort/success, except for those few times the student truly excelled? The more I think about it, the more disgusted I am.</p>

13

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<p>That’s the thing, I think “mastered it” is a slightly arbitrary assignment, is it not? Some teachers I’ve had would say that a B already indicates that one has had solid command over the material, and that an A is awarded for further excellence. For instance, in an honors level course, perhaps a B is awarded for solving most of the problems, which certainly indicate one knows all the material inside out, yet an A may be awarded for solving especially difficult problems which require much more enthusiasm and may not necessarily be necessary to seriously mastering the material for further use.</p>

<p>I think at a certain point, as someone said, grades are just about accomplishment (in a certain course), and not even a measure of mastery in the first place.</p>

14

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<p>I agree especially because A+'s can be very, very hard to come by, depending on what classes one has been taking. As in, significantly harder than A’s. A 4.3 as opposed to 4.0 addition would hardly be too generous in these occasions.</p>

15

<p>There is a huge discrepancy among professors about an A vs an A+. Some rarely ever give them out and some give them out as often as they give out solid As.</p>

16

<p>More generally there is a huge discrepancy about the different letter grades across any large school, or almost any!</p>