As I am thinking about it why posters are suggesting is the most appropriate way to distribute course grades, I can’t I am not sure that I understand the purpose of gpa. I am not sure which of your approaches makes the most sense, if I don’t even understand what they purpose of it is.
I keep thinking, what can anyone really tell from a gpa? Clearly a 4.0 seems better than a 2.5 for an individual student, but without standards, distributions vary significantly from class to class, major to major, and school to school, and year to year. People talk about grade inflation, but I have no idea how much of that is that students are more competitive over time, and how much is just easier grading.
Can anyone tell me what the objective of GPA is supposed to be?
@mathyone “In a large STEM class, the performance of the students generally is a normal distribution. It’s not being “forced” in some artificial way. That is how it comes out.”
Isn’t that pretty likely in any case thanks to the central limit theorem?
Short answer: yes, but there are confounding factors that make the CLT’s application to this issue questionable. Students in any given classroom are not a random sample, test grades are not always a good proxy for what they are meant to predict (understanding of the material), and I have yet to see any solid reason that classes are of equal quality year-to-year (I have often seen the opposite, in fact).
Interesting question. Personally I’d peg it as an imperfect but useful measure of understanding of the material (transcripts would be imperfect but better), though I could see someone believing that it is a system to rank people. If GPA is meant to rank then a forced distribution would make more sense, though it would undermine the usefulness of GPA as a metric in general.
But could the higher GPAs in humanities be at least partly due to self-selection out of interest in the subject, relative to other majors? Some students may not have a strong interest or ability in any subject, so they may choose their major for (perceived) pre-professional reasons. Humanities majors seem to be the least likely to be chosen for those reasons, which may leave them with mainly students with stronger interest and ability in those subjects. It would not be surprising if majors like business and (less-math) economics at schools where those majors are not extra selective are more likely to attract the weaker students. There may also be easy majors where the weakest students are directed to in order for them to graduate, but these vary from school to school.
If employers are trying to copy colleges with respect to “grading on a curve”, they obviously have not noticed that employment evaluations are not like the college situations. When a given manager evaluates a group of employees, that group is no larger than a very small class at a college. Add in the fact that the employees may not all be doing the same tasks or even same type of job (unlike students in class doing the same assignments, tests, etc.).
“Grading on a curve” tends mainly to be used in large classes (not small ones) in colleges, since large classes are less likely to have unexpected student ability distributions. Whether or not you find “grading on a curve” acceptable even in the large class case, it makes little or no sense to apply it to classes as small as the number of direct reporting employees under one manager. It makes even less sense to apply it when those employees are not being judged on the same set of assignments.
(Getting back to colleges) Of course, even classes not “graded on a curve” may have low percentages on exams. The aforementioned example of a class with exams with equally weighted C problems, B problems, and A problems may result in scores like 30%, but those still get passing (C) grades based on a pre-set absolute scale (and scores like 60% get B grades, etc.).
@Muchtolearn I think every transcript should have a warning label: The grades can only be interpreted with respect to a given course given by a given instructor at a given time at a given school. Any other extrapolation is unwarranted.
Here is an article that illustrates the problem you mentioned in post 280. A student, simply by changing her major can magically becoming a much better student, and get a lot more rest on the side:
I am also willing to bet that relative to her other “A” classmates in psychology and policy management, she is among the very best. It would not show up in the GPA of course, but it will show up in the GRE if she were to take it.
Transcripts are still a fair bit better than just looking at the GPA itself, since it gives you an idea of the coursework they took and whether or not there is a lot of padding/risk-averse behavior visible there. A lot of people feel that if someone has a 4.0 or close to it, that it makes the person seem more “human” if their transcript reveals that they’ve had their bad grades to go along with their good.
It’s far from perfect but it’s a telling metric that is hard to replace. Grades aren’t entirely random, and hopefully not even mostly random.
Looking at the chart labeled “Project talent: General, math, verbal, and spatial aptitude”, it appears that the main difference between math/CS, physical science, and engineering versus humanities, social science, and biological science is in math and spatial aptitude (however that is measured). Verbal was not all that different across these majors (and humanities majors had the highest scores there; at the BA/BS level, social science, biological science, and engineering had the lowest verbal). The two non-engineering pre-professional majors that are most common at less selective universities (education and business) bring up the rear; art is only slightly better, but art talent may be a separate dimension from these measures.
Perhaps a better title would be “Your college major i* is a pretty good indication of how smart you are at math”. Skill at math is certainly important in today’s society, but it is not the only dimension of intelligence.
Back in the era when I was taking the GRE and data on performance by major were available, the students with the highest total GRE score (verbal plus math) were those who had majored in classics. They were followed by the physicists. This was at a time when the people taking the GRE were preponderantly American–so the second place for the physicists was probably not due to non-native English speakers depressing the physicists’ verbal scores. The PRC had not yet permitted its citizens to come to the US for graduate study, back then.
I would say it is not the math “level” that Wai is measuring, but the level of critical thinking skills that one can exert on a problem that he is interested in.
Some years ago the International Math Olympiad was held in town. To give the readers a feel of the stuff, a local paper put up some questions- from simply difficult to Olympiad level- for readers to try out. None of those problems require high level mathematics but they all require high level critical thinking that is beyond the capability of most.
This kind of critical thinking can also be found in things like the MAT, which has no math in it at all. The trouble is that I know of no major that spend all day cracking analogies, whereas there are tons of majors that spend an enormous amount of time solving math problems. Yet, the high correlation between the MAT and other standardized tests tell me they are tapping into the same critical thinking skills…
I am more interested at the reactive of posters to the problem of grading variability. Few see it as a problem. Am I missing something?
I think that grading variability is a problem to some extent. For one thing, students in STEM fields may be discouraged from continuing, or may underestimate their abilities, due to the generally lower grades in STEM than in other fields. This is especially a problem if there is a gender differential in the reaction, which I suspect there may be. First-generation college students might be more susceptible to discouragement as well, though I have not seen data on that. On the one hand, I would not encourage a student to stick with a STEM major solely on the grounds of future employment prospects–one needs to love the field to deal with the assorted set-backs and ego blows that one may encounter, well into a STEM career. On the other hand, I would really hope that those who love any particular STEM field would stick with it.
I think there is a problem that high-school students have become heavily grade-focused. The combination of GPA admission standards for reasonably good schools and grade inflation in high schools contributes to this. Then it carries forward to college and interferes with learning. It also leads to “sand-bagging,” of taking courses that one has already covered previously, or opting for the softer option, when several are available.
While average grades in the humanities are higher, this may not be true for a given individual. A STEM student who is very talented at STEM subjects can often come near the top of the class in most of his/her STEM classes. I am not sure that this is true in the humanities. While STEM courses sometimes involve an oral presentation of some sort, in most STEM classes, discussion does not figure into the grading. Often, there is no oral presentation at all. In a lot of humanities classes, discussion contributions to the class count toward the grade. A student who is quiet by temperament may do better in STEM classes for that reason alone.
Grading variability is not so much of a problem when students who have been graded similarly are applying for the same types of positions. Barring rare exceptions, a firm looking for a civil engineering major will not be looking at psychology majors for the same spot. This tends to level the playing field.
There are, however, other types of post-college plans that draw students from a number of majors. In that case, the average GPA advantage of other majors over STEM can be problematic.
I think it is only a sidetrack for those kids already in college having to face it for the first time. But, I think it does go to core of this conversation. Should students be taught exactly what they need to know to do well on a test or should students learn to problem-solve in order to master application of concepts. Our K12 system teaches kids do this to get this. There is an entire different way of learning that doesn’t take that approach, and it does not take waiting until college to learn this way.
Earn a high enough GPA to apply to medical or high-rank law school.
Actually, it may be worse in college than high school, because high school students are told that they need to get good grades in the hardest classes in order to increase their chance of admission to selective colleges. In college, and in application to professional school, it is widely believed that there is less emphasis on the rigor of courses chosen when considering GPA.
Anecdotal evidence exhibit A: my kid. As in STEM courses even the hardest ones taken concurrently, any Bs she got were in English and social sciences. Still true in college. Some things are just easier for her. Writing is not one of them though she’s working very hard to improve as she finds she has to write research applications and grant requests and they have to make sense and persuade folks to hire her/fund her.
“On the one hand, I would not encourage a student to stick with a STEM major solely on the grounds of future employment prospects–one needs to love the field to deal with the assorted set-backs and ego blows that one may encounter, well into a STEM career. On the other hand, I would really hope that those who love any particular STEM field would stick with it.”
This is where this discussion goes off the rails. What career DOESN’T involve set-backs, who blows, try-for-y-but-only-achieve-x? How is a STEM career remotely different from any other endeavor in this regard?
“am more interested at the reactive of posters to the problem of grading variability. Few see it as a problem. Am I missing something?”
Yes. I’m easily able to determine the prospective employees I want from interviewing them. Therefore the distinction between the 3.5 at Good School vs the 3.6 at Other Good School is of little importance. Normal people with normal social skills are able to actually talk to people instead of burying their heads in resumes and transcripts.
No one said that. But it’s being deliberately obtuse to pretend that only STEM careers are full of setbacks. Lots of people work hard and are smart in things that don’t involve STEM, sylvan. Honest.