Does grade deflation really exist at Berkeley?

Colleges & Universities University of California - Berkeley
63

<p>An interesting study on grade distribution in EE and CS courses, for EECS and L&S CS majors, from 1999:</p>

<p>[Grade</a> Distributions for EECS and LSCS Students](<a href=“http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~hilfingr/report/index.html]Grade”>http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~hilfingr/report/index.html)</p>

<p>Note: L&S CS was capped at the time. Also, [url=&lt;a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/Ucberkeley.html]gradeinflation.com[/url”&gt;UC-Berkeley]gradeinflation.com[/url</a>] says that Berkeley’s average GPA was 3.12 in 1997 and 3.24 in 2005 (it does not list any years in between). Transfer students rarely arrive with the full set of lower division EE and CS courses, since most of them are not offered at community colleges.</p>

<p>Some observations:</p>

<p>a. L&S CS majors generally did better than EECS majors.
b. D or F made up only about 5% or less of EE and CS grades.
c. Transfer students generally did worse on average, but did not get D or F any more frequently.
d. Oddly, lower division CS grade averages were significantly higher than upper division CS grade averages. Seems like “weeding” was not actually being done.
e. EE grade averages were about the same for lower division and upper division for non-transfer students; transfer students did worse in upper division than lower division.
f. More plain grades (e.g. A, B, C) were given than + or - of the same grades (e.g. more B grades than B+ grades, and more B grades than B- grades).</p>