<p>Faculty</a> postpone vote on grading overhaul | Yale Daily News</p>
<p>Hmmm.....</p>
<p>I saw those articles too. It sounds like the professors think there is too much grade inflation and they want to change the system to lower grades. You might think I’m weird but I don’t really mind this. I think it means they’re getting more serious about academics. The other school I might choose (Swarthmore) has much less grade inflation than Yale and the kids there feel like it really means something to get an “A”. This actually makes me lean even more toward Yale if they’re serious. One of the things that had been bothering me was that Yale is getting a reputation as a place for easy grades or at least that’s what the kids in my school think and its why a lot of them want to go there instead of other places! I’m sure it isn’t completely true and these changes would make me even prouder to call myself a Yale student. So I guess I’m one of those crazy people who think that I shouldn’t just automatically get an “A”. I work hard but I really want to know how I’m comparing to the other people in my class. It doesn’t bother me to get a “B” if I know that a bunch of other kids in the class are doing better. It just makes me want to work harder.</p>
<p>Following Princeton’s lead in grade-equality across majors. A Princeton degree is a Princeton degree is a Princeton degree. The same cannot be said of Yale.</p>
<p>Unfortunately some of us were hoping to attend law school after undergrad. Also, many prestigious fellowships have high minimum GPA thresholds.</p>
<p>It’s true that a Yale degree is not a Princeton degree.</p>
<p>As for the proposed grading change, I say if it isn’t broken, don’t bother fixing it, and I don’t think there’s really anything wrong with Yale’s grading system now. Anybody who thinks it’s “easy” to get As doesn’t know much about it.</p>
<p>I don’t know, the article says 62% of the grades awarded last spring were in the A range (which I assume includes A-). Sounds pretty easy to me.</p>
<p>Are you a student at Yale? It sounds like the undergraduates are opposed to these changes. This articles say that over 60% of the grades at Yale are A’s. Do you think that’s right because that sounds high. LOL at my high school its about 30% A’s so that’s what I’m used to. [Faculty</a> consider grading overhaul | Yale Daily News](<a href=“http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2013/02/11/faculty-consider-grading-overhaul/]Faculty”>Faculty consider grading overhaul - Yale Daily News) </p>
<p>Do the professors give a lot of feedback so that even if most people are getting the same grade you get some idea about what you can improve and where you need to work harder?</p>
<p>How would you compare Swarthmore and Yale’s academic environments? Do you think there’s more of an academic focus at one place or the other and why do you think grading at the two schools is so different? Sorry about all the questions and maybe you don’t know anybody at Swarthmore but I thought I’d ask.</p>
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The fallacy in this reasoning is the assumption that if a lot of Yale students get As, the work must be easy. Yale students (like Princeton students, by the way) are pre-selected to be smart, driven, hard-working people. My observation is that they work harder than they did 30 years ago, because these days they were all pretty much super-achievers in high school. I’ve always thought that an A grade should not represent victory over other classmates, but should represent mastery of the material at a high level. I don’t find it surprising that a majority of Yale students achieve that level of mastery in most of their classes–remember, most of them got nothing but As in high school, in the most challenging curricula available in those schools.</p>
<p>It may be that some other entities would prefer that Yale use grades to sort its students into tiers of achievement, but I don’t see why Yale should give in. Let those entities figure out for themselves what Yale’s grades mean.</p>
<p>Like I said earlier, if there is grade inflation it’s not in the pre-med classes or Bio. My sophomore son works his a@@ off and if I include A-'s he is at 46.6%. If I only include A’s then it drops to 13.3%. Please show me this supposed inflation. :(</p>
<p>Also, I do agree with Hunt that there are some amazing students at Yale and if you look at the average GPA and SAT/ACT scores you can understand why there may be more A’s than at most colleges. ;)</p>
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<p>Until you realize that you are competing with 1300 really really smart classmates. </p>
<p>It is not easy.</p>
<p>I do think there’s an inherent problem with comparing grades in STEM and non-STEM courses. In many (but not all) STEM courses, performance is more easily quantified–you can give a test or problem set, and count up the correct answers. That’s just harder to do in grading analytical English papers. The papers will be quite different from each other, even if they are responding to the same prompt. This is not high school, so you’re not basing grades on the number of comma faults.</p>
<p>But the kinds of graduate schools and employers that Yale students tend to move into are probably sophisticated enough to understand this, so why change things if there is no real problem? I agree with the students who fear that the proposed changes would make Yale more cutthroat and competitive, something it really doesn’t need.</p>
<p>I think another fact that may play into this is that 70% of the majors at Yale are in the Arts/Humanities (31%) and Social Sciences (39%). Biological and Physical Sciences only account for 23%.</p>
<p>This is my thinking: There is no doubt that all the students at Yale are above average. Their SAT/ACT scores show that. And in high school they all got As (which I’m pretty sure means “exceptional”) because they are so far above average. Most of their high school teachers were blown away by how bright they were and how quickly they came to understand difficult concepts.</p>
<p>The question is, what do you do with them in college? Do you say that they are still all above average, compared to all the college students in America (which is certainly true). If so, then the A at Yale is probably really “exceptional” compared to the average American college student. And an A at Yale is then worth the same as an A at any other college in the country. And you should expect to have lots of As at Yale.</p>
<p>Or do you recalibrate your scale? Is an A at Yale “exceptional” compared to other Yale students? If so, then that is really saying something. Maybe a B at Yale is equivalent to a C at other colleges in America. </p>
<p>If 62% of the grades at Yale are As, then it would seem that we are going with the first calibration - they are all still exceptional vs. other students everywhere.</p>
<p>It would seem that the question that the faculty needs to answer is if they want to do the recalibration and make is so that an A at Yale is, really, even more exceptional than at other schools. </p>
<p>They need to determine what they want the Yale brand to be.</p>
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<p>This is exactly right, at least for STEM majors. The market will decide how much an A at Yale is worth. I don’t really see the need to change the Yale grading scale, as long as everyone understands what it is.</p>
<p>62% of grades in the A range is much too high. It doesn’t matter that everyone is above average nationally, because the grades are self contained.</p>
<p>My name doesn’t hide that I go to Princeton where though I’m not personally pleased with a likely deflated (or rather, not inflated) GPA, I at least think it makes sense. Hunt - do I think that more students achieve mastery in classes than get As for doing so? Not at all. If so then the class is simply not challenging enough. In fact if I were to have no precedent and didn’t have to worry about practical considerations I’d want to deflate grades even more. That way getting an A could stand for something other than “I didn’t do much below average”. In other words, I think that the actual difference in quality of work is larger than the difference in grades given.</p>
<p>I’m not able to compare the levels of mastery achieved by Princeton and Yale students. I can only comment on what I’ve observed at Yale. Princeton has chosen to follow a different grading approach, and I have to say that I can’t see that it has benefited Princeton students in any particular way.</p>
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I will also add that the quoted statement doesn’t actually say anything.</p>
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And even if you’re right, so what? What is the college trying to achieve with grades? If the college isn’t interested in creating a competition for grades, whose business is it to get it to change? As the article above notes, the students at Yale are against the idea, and the faculty has (for now) backed off on making changes.</p>
<p>I don’t know what they’re trying to achieve with grades. Probably not much. This isn’t an argument for any given school to implement grade deflation (the problem being that others inevitably won’t). I agree that Princeton probably hasn’t benefited from it. </p>
<p>I simply think that grades should reflect - as precisely as possible - differences in quality of work. There should be some way to reflect that a student went above and beyond by giving him/her a grade that isn’t given to so many others. And just as well for the other side of the coin. That’s fair, and if grades are to provide any incentive (which they do), I think the best way for them to do so. It makes “what you put in is what you get out” much more concrete and blatant, and I support that. </p>
<p>Besides, of course Yale students don’t want it change. They probably wouldn’t want change if the average GPA was a 3.9. I also wouldn’t want Princeton’s to change, but if every college in the Ivy League decided to implement deflation I’d be all for it because I do think it’s a problem in general. And I’m hoping this will eventually happen.</p>
<p>If this happens, it could really drop Yale’s yield.</p>
<p>Why is it surprising that students with average SATs in the 700s across the board would be capable of getting As in college level coursework?</p>
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This is the thing–I don’t think grades are the major incentive for working in classes at Yale. Indeed, students tend (in my experience) to work even in credit/fail classes. I think that’s a strength, not a weakness.</p>