<p><a href=“from%20the%20quoted%20article%20of%20post%20#1”>quote</a> …according to a preliminary report released last week by the Yale College ad hoc committee on grading policy.
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<p>I really have some trouble with two terms here: “preliminary report”, and “the Yale College ad hoc committee.” </p>
<p>In the industry, every company has a strict rule about who in the company has the access to and has the authority to release any data/information that may positively or negatively influence the company in any way. You will never see some “ad hoc committee” in a company has a full access to some sensitive data and, without obtaining the authorization from the proper, usually very high level of management first, just go ahead and release their findings based on the data they have accessed.</p>
<p>I guess a university is a charity organization so the usual practices that the company relies on to promote/protect their interests/brand do not apply?! Maybe I have been away from an academic institute as a student for too long and my mind has been polluted by what the executives in the company keep reminding me again and again what wy is the right way for too long?</p>
<p>I dislike the idea of percentage grades and do think that introducing them will make things more competitive. However, to some extent I think Yale could deal with what I see as the #1 problem–a way to identify truly outstanding students–by allowing profs to give A plus grades. These would be reserved for genuinely superb work.</p>
<p>Yale recently changed the requirements for distinction in your major. However, it’s always been extremely difficult to get “highest distinction” in your major. In some majors, about one person earns that every 10 years. From what I’ve heard, more “highest” distinctions are given out in STEM fields than in other fields.</p>
<p>I think trying to “normalize” things by insisting that each major have the same percentage of cum laude, magna and summa is a bad idea. Part of the idea is that having Latin honors is to reward those students who do well in everything. There are students who genuinely excel in one field who aren’t great students overall. As things stand, they can get distinction in their major but won’t get Latin honors.</p>
<p>I know someone who graduated from Yale as a studio art major. This person is an amazing artist and graduated with distinction in the art major. I think that’s totally fair. But outside art, the student’s grades were usually in the B/B+ range. Seriously, I don’t think the student should have gotten Latin honors in that situation. (With the current system, the student did not get Latin honors.)</p>
<p>While anecdotal reports certainly suggest that grades in MOST STEM courses are less inflated than grades generally, not all STEM majors are tougher than other majors. And certainly, not all non-STEM majors at Yale are created equal. I not only mean that some majors are tougher than others, but that some majors tend to attract more of the most outstanding non-STEM majors than others. There are even a few majors at Yale which you must apply for. Usually, you won’t be accepted unless your grades put you at least in the top half of the class. Should these majors be limited to the same distribution of grades and /or Latin honors? I think that’s silly.</p>
<p>And, IMO, grade compression has zilch to do with the fact that someone who doesn’t excel freshman year is going to have a hard time graduating summa. Summa is limited to the top 5% of the class (and because of grade “breaks,” it’s usually less.) It’s not based on fixed GPA. If you have a less than stellar first year, it’s going to be hard to end up in the top 5% of the class after 4 years, no matter what kind of grading system is used.</p>
<p>Grade should be given on the basis of mastery of the subject. There should not be any required distribution, inflated or deflated. This is the most basic freedom a faculty should have. </p>
<p>In my years of teaching, I once gave no A or B in one of my class, and 100% As in another, both of the same course! I was lucky, I guess, that my chairs/deans/provosts/presidents did not knock on my door for my grading.</p>
<p>This is an option. I think that if you graduate from an Ivy with an A or a C, that both students are very intelligent people capable of doing 90% of what they will interview to do.</p>
<p>jonri, I don’t understand your belief that grade compression has “zlich” to do with the fact that someone who does not excel freshman year is going to have a hard time graduating summa.</p>
<p>Perhaps we mean different things by “grade compression.” I use it to mean the concentration of grades at the top end of the scale, with many grades of A being awarded. I believe that the GPA cut-off for graduating summa has risen accordingly. In 2012, a student needed a 3.95 to graduate summa. </p>
<p>Now, consider a student who contracts mono in one semester of freshman year, doesn’t withdraw, and manages to get a 3.5 for that semester. The student gets a 4.0 for the remaining 7 semesters. (For simplicity, I have weighted the semesters equally, though in practice, the student probably go mono in a 5-unit semester). The student winds up with a GPA of 3.9375, with a performance that I would consider excellent.</p>
<p>When I suggested classifying for Latin honors based on major, I did not mean that only the grades in the major should be considered. I meant that the overall GPA’s of physicists should be compared with other physicists, and those of psychologists with psychologists.</p>
<p>Personally, I think that a 3.8 cutoff to graduate merely “cum laude” is bordering on ridiculous. I think this discourages students (on the whole) from taking courses in which they are not certain that they can do well.</p>
<p>My undergrad academic adviser had been a student at Harvard. For a long time, I could not understand why he did not want me to take certain courses for the distribution requirement (not at Yale nor at Harvard, but where I went) unless I already had a good background in the area. I think I get it now.</p>
<p>IN the end…my student will graduate with a great degree from a great U…
cum laude or not…</p>
<p>and so we have encouraged k1 to take risks, take courses from difficult profs, take courses to explore subjects, literature, politics, whatever …and to really use and enjoy all of the resources Yale has to offer…</p>
<p>fogfog, that philosophy sounds great in theory but for pre-med’s like my son, it doesn’t bode so well. SOM’s have GPA filters that reject applicants before they reach an interview stage so preserving a high GPA is critical.</p>
<p>Sometimes I feel that premeds tend to get the short end of the stick in their education at an elite school (not only at Yale), as compared to those who are aspiring to head to academia. What is worse is that, from other people’s view, this is a personal choice.</p>
<p>A new fad, as I heard, is that the kids will not take any those not so pleasant med school prereq classes as an UG, and when they are more mature after UG, register in a reputable “career changer” post-bacc program (they love those kids from the elite colleges due to their standardized test capability) and suck it up for a years or so. For those families who can afford high tuitions since their loved ones’ prep schools, this should not be too burdensome, financially speaking.</p>
<p>If there is no grade inflation, that student is NOT going to get a 3.5 for that semester. That’s what you seem to be missing. There’s no reason to think that 3.5 is less grade inflated than other students’ 4.0s.</p>
<p>No matter what the grading scale, someone who gets a GPA which puts him at best at the 50th percentile one semester is unlikely to end up in the top 5% over all. Yale Latin honors are based on percentages of the class, not absolute cut-offs.</p>
<p>I’m lousy at math, but still…</p>
<p>Assume there are 1200 students in the class. Assume the top 60 will achieve summa. Instead of using grades, use class standing. At the end of the first semester, your student is about number 550 (a 3.5 is probably no better than that; indeed, it’s probably worse. ) In each of the following semesters, he’s number 1. His “average” class standing for all 8 semesters will be about a 70, so he’s not going to make summa. </p>
<p>Now, obviously, that’s not how the math really works but the concept is the same. If you are in the middle of the class for one semester, it’s hard to end up in the top 5% for all 8 cumulatively.</p>
<p>BTW, my understanding is that IRL, plain As aren’t all that common. It’s A-s that are and B+ grades are even more common. The student with a 3.5 average has probably benefited more from grade inflation than the student with a 4.0.</p>
<p>Re jonri, #30: Why do you assume that the 3.5 is the result of grade inflation? The hypothetical student had a 4.0 every other semester. I don’t know about the distribution between A and A-, but I have to assume that is fairly hard to do.</p>
<p>The hypothetical student is almost surely among the top 5% on the class when reasonably healthy. We both agree that it doesn’t come out that way.</p>
<p>In earlier days, when there was less grade inflation, there not be anything like 5% of the class with GPA’s of 3.95 and up. The student’s 3.9375 would be more than enough. </p>
<p>You make a good point that the 3.5 might also be the result of grade inflation. It’s hard to estimate what the “true” uninflated marks should be. </p>
<p>I like the British system better, really, where the degree classifications are based on the performance at the end of the final year–this allows for students who develop intellectually during college to receive first-class honors, even if they did not start out at that level.</p>
<p>Something I am not certain about: What is the infuence (if any) of GPA on admission to small seminar classes?</p>
<p>If none, then fine. If there is an influence, then I think that students taking more difficult course loads might be disadvantaged in terms of admission to seminars in which a lot of students want to enroll–clearly more significant educationally than Latin honors.</p>
<p>I would just note that students at Yale–at least in my experience–don’t care too much about Latin honors one way or the other. Most of them have already obtained admission to grad or professional schools or jobs before those honors are announced. There are a few prizes that are a big deal.</p>
<p>Is there any evidence that Yale graduates are being hindered in their efforts to gain admission to med schools because of Yale’s grading policy? Frankly, I’ve only heard that complaint about Princeton–which did something like what we’re talking about.</p>
<p>Well, I’d definitely agree that Latin honors are not the most important part of the grading “problem” if there is a problem.</p>
<p>I don’t know about the situation of Yale grads applying to med schools, which care a lot about undergrad GPA, or law schools, which care to some extent. Several of QMP’s friends are “stopping out” for a year or two, doing something else, before applying to med or law school, though.</p>
<p>My personal feeling is that there is no problem. People who excel should get As. If a class has an excellent teacher and many students get As, I have no problem with that. </p>
<p>For students moving on to med school, law school, graduate school: I think it is up to the future med/law/grad school to know the worth of a Yale degree. These med/law/grad schools have experience that tells them that Yale grads are better prepared than grads from Other School X (or not…). They also know how specific courses at Yale (vs. other colleges) grade and how hard they are. They are not just looking at grades/GPA but also at the courses that the students take. Med/law/grad schools know the difference between a 4.0 with the easiest possible load and a 3.5 with the most difficult courses.</p>
<p>In fact, it seems to me that changing the grading scheme at Yale will only hurt new Yale grads because their grades won’t be as meaningful to the med/law/grad schools that have grown used to the current scheme. </p>
<p>In the end, I think students are best served by leaving things alone.</p>
<p>I don’t favor capping the number of A grades. I also think that the proposal to move to a 0-100 point scale is not good.</p>
<p>I don’t have a problem with the large number of A’s given out, except for a few things:
I don’t believe that the distribution of A’s is even approximately equal across departments. There are fellowships for which students from many different majors compete.
I think that grad schools do look at the courses on the transcript, because admissions decisions are often made by faculty committees. So that should be fine, in general.
In my experience, med schools do not take the differences in the difficulty of courses (or the strictness of grading) into account within any given university. They do seem to take the differences among universities into account. I don’t really know about law schools, but there are plots of acceptance rate in cross-tables between GPA and LSAT score. GPA certainly matters to them. What is Yale law’s average undergrad GPA for the entering class? 3.95 or something?
The accumulation of scores at the high end of the scale, instead of freeing students to take a more challenging course (without many A’s) from time to time, seems from my observations often to lead to students taking easier courses to assure that they continue to receive A’s. Hence “Science of Cooking” at Harvard. Maybe someone from Harvard will show up here to defend that course.</p>
<p>Actually, I think that med schools doubly reward taking the easier course: First, by not paying attention to whether more challenging options were available, but taking the viewpoint that an A is an A is an A. Second, because the choice of an easier course allows more time for volunteering/lab work/extra-curricular leadership, which med schools value.</p>
<p>It seems strange to me that in high school, so much emphasis is placed on taking the most rigorous courseload offered, and then in college, where taking the most rigorous courseload that a student can handle would be horizon-expanding (rather than just a lot more work), very little attention is paid to the rigor of the coursework.</p>
<p>If your experiences, or the experiences of your S/D contradict this, I’d be interested in hearing.</p>
<p>My experience, and that of my kids, suggests that most students at Yale don’t take the occasional “gut” (easy) class to preserve GPA, but rather to satisfy distributional requirements without having an unacceptable workload. One way to take a challenging course without worrying about GPA is to take it pass/fail–something both of my kids have done.</p>
<p>QuantMech, I am not sure I understand why you are upset. Is it because you dislike the way med schools choose their students? Or you feel Yale specifically puts their pre-med students at a disadvantage in some way (compared to other universities)?</p>
<p>I’d like to see students taking full advantage of the academic opportunities they have, wherever they go (from my perspective as a member of the academic community). I think that students who are focused on GPA do not do this. I think that any system that has a GPA cut-off without regard to the content of the transcript encourages students to look for the easy way out.</p>
<p>I teach and advise a lot of pre-medical students. I think that the med school admissions process tends to distort their undergraduate education. Although the AMCAS system creates a transcript screen of a low-level sort, as far as I know and speaking of my university, AMCAS does not distinguish between students who took the easier version of organic chemistry, rather than the more difficult one, and it does not distinguish among students who took the easiest of four levels of calculus classes. Perhaps there is some screen of this sort applied?</p>
<p>The long-term offshoot is that while there are students in med school whom I am happy to see there, there are other students in med school whom I and my colleagues hope we never have to see, when they become physicians!</p>
<p>I don’t think the proposed grading changes will help this problem–in fact, they seem likely to exacerbate the run on easier courses (though no longer easier grading).</p>