Brown vs Dartmouth

Uroogla
Sat, 16 Apr 2011 23:31:12 +0000

To give you a sense of Chem at Brown, here’s what I can gleam about orgo 1 from various course documents. 3 hours of lectures, 5 of prelab/lab, and a optional problem session a week. Exams are primarily non-regurgitation, but application of the concepts. 2-3 exams outside the normal class time, plus labs and a final. At least in orgo 2, the distribution seems to be roughly: anyone 1 or more standard deviations above the mean gets an A, 1 or more standard deviations below the mean fails, and the mean is a low B, with some room for the professor to wiggle the boundaries somewhat. The 3 midterms and final combine for 83% of the course grade; the lab is the remaining 17%.

My views on GPA at Brown can be found in more detail on other threads, but…there’s definitely inflation at Brown. Substantially more than at Dartmouth? Maybe, maybe not. Physical science courses have the lowest average GPA, and as the distribution above shows, some courses have relatively tough curves. I do know that I have higher standards for myself (and, as a grader, for others) than some of the professors have, but that might be because I got used to the standards of my high school, which were much higher for the top grades (and that’s true of any college, it seems, so that’s just me).

I somehow doubt people work much harder at one institution or the other. Students at both are highly motivated. Brown’s lack of +/-'s and the ability to take anything S/NC affect the average GPA, for instance, making it less of a useful stat for saying much of anything. Any internal distinctions at Brown begin with a count of A’s rather than a GPA, for instance.