ryuken3k

Does it depend on the professor?

phufool

Yup, professor decides on the grading scale

Oyama

The popular ones are:

93% for A; 90% for A- for a lot of humanities/social science/lower div anything classes where there isn't a large skew in a grading curve

The rest: Median + 2stdev (+.5stdev) for A-/A. For example, if there's an exam (assume normal distribution; bimodal distributions don't happen too often) with a median of 70 and stdev of 8, 70 + (2*8) = 86 for A-; 70 + (2.5*8) = 90 for A.

The second isn't a policy or anything, but most curves fall towards something along those lines, at least by anecdotal experience.

Oyama

And if there's a skew left or right (resulting in large stdevs), different methods are used to adjust the curve; either the professor will subjectively make the cutoffs for certain grades, or some log() will be applied to an algorithm to avoid subjective grade adjustments.

astrina

many grades are subjective though -- as a TA i've been able to up grades by a fraction (ie, B+ to A-) by arguing that so-and-so had a really crummy lab partner who was cramping their style, they had to work extra hard, etc. and one class that i was pretty sure i wasn't going to pass -- snuck by with a C-, and i'm pretty sure it's because i worked for the professor.

it happens. but from what i've seen, subjective adjustments can only help the student (otherwise it's bad news bears if anyone ever finds out a prof actually lowered a grade out of spite).

Oyama

Whenever I've TA'ed, the professor usually just signs the grade form the graduate TA's make. They really don't do much in terms of nit-picking individual students' grades--at least in the social sciences/maths.