<p>When sorting by difficulty, does 1 = easiest or hardest?</p>
<p>1 would be hardest. And I believe it is on a scale of 0-4.</p>
<p>No, 1 is the easiest. </p>
<p>Oh, and take the ratings on PCR with a grain of salt. Courses change (often dramatically) from year to year.</p>
<p>Yeah the difficulty ratings do not translate very well to GPAs because they’re submitted before final exams/grades, so the professor of a course with a 3.8 difficulty (very hard) might have given almost everyone A’s at the end of the semester. </p>
<p>I generally find instructor evaluations to be the most useful. The quality of the course itself could vary a lot depending on who is teaching</p>
<p>How are courses rated?</p>
<p>At the end of each semester, the Provost’s office, in conjunction with ISC, administers Penn’s course evaluation form, which consists of eleven questions aimed at assessing the quality of the course and instructor. Each evaluation question is answered on a scale of Poor to Excellent. The ratings are translated numerically so that a rating of 0.00 corresponds a student evaluation of “Poor,” 1.00 corresponds to an evaluation of “Fair,” 2.00 to “Good,” 3.00 to “Very Good,” and 4.00 to “Excellent.”</p>
<p>Are we talking about Penn Course Review? Because I pulled that directly from the FAQ on the website and if its wrong I’m VERY CONFUSED!</p>
<p>^sounds right. Why are you confused?</p>
<p>^^ What’s the confusing part?
Btw, ever since they’ve computerized the evaluation forms, most people just skip filling them out altogether lol.
Imho, it’s best to go with classes you’re actually interested in. Those often turn out to be easier for students than the so-called ‘easy courses’ on PCR.</p>
<p>I feel like I must be missing a really simple concept but if 4.0 is excellent that means (by my logic) that its very easy. But in actuality a 4.0 is very difficult? </p>
<p>I’m sure that you’re right though about the subjectivity of it all. PCR seems nice but I surely won’t be basing my course selections solely on its reviews.</p>
<p>^ There are different ratings for different categories!</p>
<p>Hard courses can have quality professors and vice-versa. Don’t assume that just because the course was rated as easy by students, that the professor in that course was rated highly.</p>
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<p>Excellent and easy are not the same thing. The best classes are almost never easy</p>
<p>So essentially a 4.0 means extremely difficult while a 1.0 means fairly easy? But then a 4.0 also means an amazing instructor while a 1.0 means a poor instructor? Its hard for me to wrap my head around because it makes more sense to associate the numbers with negatives and positives like 4.0 = great but I guess that isn’t the case in this system.</p>