Parents of engineering freshman....

[sylvan8798]

<p>

@fazzled2thecore

I do not think this is fair to true beginners, especially in curved classes, and wish more schools would take student baseline into account when assigning students to entry level classes and recitations. While an experienced student can usually manage if instruction is poor or geared to students who have already seen most of the material in an AP, IB, or DE class, an inexperienced student in this situation might need to find a tutor for several hours a week, repeat the class (after a W or poor grade), or conclude that a poor or even failing grade is a result of lack of talent or poor study skills rather than sloppy placement policies or poor teaching or classroom management.

In many cases I don’t really see how this would be possible. At my grad school there were 2-3 sections of Physics I each semester, with 180 students each. Students enrolled in one according to which teacher they wanted or to what fit their schedule times best. It wouldn’t have been feasible to test and sort that many students into so few sections. </p>

<p>Even in the math department, where there were dozens of smaller sections for each course, trying to test and sort the student body would have been onerous. And are you really going to tell a student that he/she can’t take the only course that fits into his schedule because he is likely to destroy the curve and prevent someone from passing with a low grade? </p>

<p>Personally, I don’t curve in my classes, and this is one of the reasons why. It should be you against the material, not you against your classmates.</p>