<p>Does anybody know if the first term or year at Columbia SEAS is pass/fail or grades? Also, does SEAS usually have class on fridays???</p>
<p>always grades and usually no class on fridays but there are some that do meet on fridays. You will pretty much only be taking a couple of SEAS classes all of freshman yr.</p>
<p>Unless they’ve changed things, SEAS has a terrible P/F policy: you can’t take anything pass fail that’s a requirement that you need to graduate, and the only way you could take a P/F class was to take an extra class that wouldn’t fulfill any requirement.</p>
<p>On the other hand, you guys get to drop a course like 3/4 into the semester…</p>
<p>Does it look really bad on your transcript though? I mean, employers might suspect that you dropped them to prevent getting a B.</p>
<p>its really not necessary since every class freshman year is curved to a b+</p>
<p>getting less than a b- is, in reality, quite hard. for most classes the professor must go to the department and make a case for WHY you deserve less than a b-. from what i understand, you have to write something like fsck you on your midterms or something to warrant that tho.</p>
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<p>absolutely not true, a prof can give u wahtever grade he/she thinks you deserve without having to explain it to anyone.</p>
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<p>dropped classes do not appear on your transcript</p>
<p>What’s a curve? Sorry, but we don’t have this here.</p>
<p>thats understandable, classes in HS r usually not curved.</p>
<p>When someone says a class is curved to a B for instance it means that the average score in the class is a B and the rest of the grades are (somewhat) normally distributed around that grade using the standard deviation. This really mainly applies to science, social science and engineering courses since humanities courses usually have arbitrary grading based on how well the prof likes you (or i guess the quality of your work in a few cases)</p>
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<p>Likewise absolutely not true.</p>
<p>i curve is simply where a grade you get is actually higher than you htink.
for example if a class uses a square root curve,</p>
<p>you take your score and square root it. THen you time 10.</p>
<p>e.g actual-81%
curved- 90%</p>
<p>Its pretty much a way to acknowledge that the course is challeging and you should not be penalized for taking a risk.</p>
<p>Also, im not sure about this and please feel free to respond, if there happens to be a belle curve, a certain number of students must get As and Bs… though i doubt Columbia uses this system.</p>
<p>Which curve and how is it done in SEAS. (also how much of a curve)</p>
<p>Phillibuster that’s how my linear algebra teacher curves our tests but I don’t think that’s a college curve.</p>
<p>An example is Cornell where some classes are curved to a B/B- i think. Basically that means, if everyone gets a 90 on a test, you can actually be curved down to a B-! So a 90 = B- IF everyone does exceptionally well.</p>
<p>So in that sense, a curve isnt like a hs curve. In most cases Curves are significantly upwards so a 80 in chem might = A.</p>
<p>The point of the curve is to make the grade nothing more a rank of your performance relative to other people in the class, rather than some comparison of your performance and some normative ideal of where you should be.</p>
<p>hmmm what truazn mentioned (about 90 being a potential B-) almost sounds like a bell curve. am i right?
So in other words, as long as you score well in comparison to your classmates you do well. I experienced this in Penn and found it extremley annoying. </p>
<p>Anyone knwo what SEAS or colubmia ACTUALLY does?</p>
<p>(Truazn, am i right in believing that you are taking linear algebra as a senior? Do many schools in the US provide high level math courses?)</p>
<p>So if I took classes with pure geniuses, I would be pretty much screwed?</p>
<p>if ur on a bell curve… um YES hahahahahaha</p>
<p>it really depends on how many geniuses there are.</p>
<p>e.g out of a class of 20 if the top 3 scores in the class go as follows (98%, 84,83,82) all 4 can possibly be As.</p>
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<p>It’s up to the profs. Most SEAS classes use some sort of a bell curve where the median is anywhere from a B-/B to a B+/A-.</p>
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<p>Classes are large enough that you will have a good range of people.</p>
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<p>I should say that curves are much less common in smaller classes. In a smaller class, the prof will probably just list out all the scores and draw the lines in the sand at reasonable places.</p>
<p>They don’t have a curve for the smaller classes do they? I mean with a size of say 15, some ppl might really get screwed over. But then again, I guess this is college.</p>
<p>EDIT: Your post didn’t show up when I posted mine, disregard this one.</p>
<p>this really feels like a “the TOP OR NOTHING” kinda situation. hahaha</p>