2020 Applicants, Ask Questions Here!

IndoorCloud25
Sat, 19 Mar 2016 07:09:27 +0000

@sodapop027 So in pretty much all of your engineering classes, professors will allow you to do problem sets, lab, or projects with other people as long as the class or assignment allows it and credit is given to everyone. In fact, pretty much all of the classes encourage collaboration with other classmates with work, however, it’s up to you if you want to take that option. If you work better alone, no one will force you to join a group. If you and a group of friends want to work and study together, then great, but stay within the confines of the class instructions and code of academic integrity. Most of the work you do is outside of class, but during lab and discussion you’ll usually work on assignments and problems in groups. I would say that the environment is very collaborative and fosters team work over fierce competition.

For grading, it’s pretty much what you’d get at other universities where nearly everything is on a curve. Usually, the departments set a target mean and median grade for the class, which doesn’t vary much by semester. This means on prelims and finals an exam with an average of 50 with a standard deviation of 10 for a class with the average grade set at a B-, the middle 50% of grades represents a B-, 1 SD above gets about an A-/A, and 1 SD below gets about a C-/C. At the end of the semester professors create a large spreadsheet with all the grades, run the statistics to find the average grade, and assign a letter to the average and the rest.

Now this isn’t the case for all classes and exams. Sometimes you’ll have exams for curved classes where the average is really high. For example, my chemistry exam had an average of 82 with a standard deviation of 14. In this case, professors will either not curve or curve down. So a 90 on the chemistry exam would probably be around a B/B+ curved down. This is mostly because department rules dictate that the class adheres to the average grade, so in order to achieve that, curving down may be necessary. If the professor doesn’t curve down, they’ll usually give a much harder prelim or final to normalize grades and get close to a bell curve at the end of the semester. In some classes there is no curving at all, and median grades could be as high as an A- or A. These are mostly upper level classes, FWS, and project teams. Professors are free to choose what kind of grading scheme or point distribution they use so long as they meet the department’s grade expectation. For certain classes, usually non-required classes, you can choose to take the class pass/fail instead of for a grade.

Just a fair warning, most of the intro level engineering core requirements have low median grades, which are either a B- (2.7) or B (3.0).