Berkeley's Grade "Deflation" Is A Myth?

sakky
Fri, 23 Apr 2010 12:09:11 +0000

@sakky-Yeah, but for grad school you are competing with people who more or less have the same major. Med schools typically take people who did biological sciences or health, and law schools take people from the humanities.



And therein lies a brilliant premed strategy: major in something easier than bio while still taking the premed requirements (perhaps at a community college). Pre-law provides no such brilliant strategy because the humanities and social sciences as you have observed obtain most of their student body are already highly grade inflated.

But the point is, it shouldn’t be that way. Different majors should not exhibit such grading differentiation. The grade distributions of each major should be roughly the same. If it is fair for, say, the engineering majors to be harshly weeded, then the American Studies majors should also be similarly harshly weeded. What’s fair is fair.

Otherwise, don’t weed the engineering students, which is my preferred solution.



I hear that about engineering majors a lot, but I’m not sure that they are. The average for most engineering classes seems to be about a B, which is roughly even with the university wide averag



*“The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976,” stated Rine, "while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-, *

[Undergraduate Education Colloquium, The College of Letters and Science, UC Berkeley](http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html)