I did not say that it is only used for that purpose, just that there are always some people using it that way. And of course students know which are the honors sections.
The reality is that a C is not considered average, ready for the next course any more (with the exception of some engineering or notoriously difficult courses). Often a B average in pre-reqs is required to move on. As Frazzled points out, a school should be up front about this if you can’t get into the business school without a B average, but in every class the mean is a C.
Sylvan has it: the kids should be tested on the material, not how well they do against each other. If one test is too easy, make the next one a bit harder and vice versa. I am sure that is not always easy to do.
Are tests getting easier in hard classes? Are students really less prepared than in the past?
Precisely, if I had any say in the grades, 1 SD below the mean would be about a C± D+ assuming this is the typical 70-80 mean score exam. Colleges aren’t allowed to do it anymore these days because students will feel they were being ‘blocked’ from getting into medical school/law school/whatever professional school or prestigious internship and tear the professor to shreds on worthless year end reviews by blaming poor instruction, poorly designed exams, or poorly other designed materials.
Everyone is being tested on the material and not against each other. I’m not sure why people continue to go on and on and on about rare situations where the average on an exam may be say a 90 and so with a curve would someone who got an 80 get something like a C- or a D? Of course not, that simply means you made the exam too easy. The curve almost always works in the students’ favor. 70-80 mean score is a highly typical exam for the department.
Uh, no. Not in the STEM premed prereqs. The curves vary not year over year. In other words, the % of A’s and B’s rarely changes. (Of course, to be fair, the quality of students changes little year over year, too.)
The curve did help my kid in one class. She was pleasantly surprised. For most of the classes at her school, A is above 90, B is 80-89, C is 70-79, D is 60-69. The borderline could be curve up depends on effort. Like 89.67 could be curved up to an A minus.
I think it’s an outlier for the average to be in the 90.
The requirement for high GPAs(3.5+) as minimum requirements to even have a chance at an AMA med school is the product of keen competition due to too many students with such GPAs or higher and not enough med school seats to accommodate them all. Part of this is also due to the need on part of med schools to admit the strongest students who have came as closest to mastering the pre-med curriculum as possible as they serve as a foundation for subsequent med school classes.
A few doctor friends even mentioned how the first year of med school is an effective intensive review/repeat of the pre-med curriculum meant to ensure first-year med school students are solid in that area before moving onto more advanced med school classes. A tiny minority of med school first-years who managed to be admitted and yet failed to pass muster here end up getting weeded out.
As a component of a college search, do you consider the average gpa at a school?
I have the impression that schools with engineering average gpa’s of 3.0 or below cause unduly stressed out students because many students see that as a critical point and are depressed if they can’t achieve it. That concerns me a bit about schools like Columbia and Purdue with tougher curves.
I am not suggesting that everyone should get an A. However, to me, shifting the mean up into the 3.2 or 3.3 range could lower the distress level for many students.
I didn’t think Purdue has tougher curves, candidates from Purdue with 3.5 and above was average to me, not exceptional.
However, Purdue first year (pre-)engineering students with low (but passing) GPAs (think 2.something, especially the lower part of the range) are less likely to get into their desired engineering majors, since they need a 3.2 GPA to get into any engineering major (besides biomedical), with lower GPA students being admitted to each major if there is space available. So, by the time of graduation, only the higher GPA students are in the major.
Yes, this is “weeding out”, but it appears to be mostly a function of departmental capacity not being large enough for all first year (pre-)engineering students to get into their majors of choice. But it can be more stressful for students at Purdue than students at schools where they are admitted to the major, or where departmental capacity is sufficient to allow freely entering the desired major.
That’s interesting as that sounds more like the Columbia SEAS of my uncle’s time in the 1950’s*, not what I’ve been hearing from Columbia SEAS undergrads in the last 2 decades.
If anything, most of the recent SEAS students/recent graduates I’ve met have the perception that their engineering curves are structured such even a 3.3 cum GPA means they are “barely/just above average”, not exceptional.
- Uncle recounted graduating with a cum GPA in the high 2.x wasn't an impediment to continuing onto their engineering masters program. Then again, he did graduate in a period when even a strong engineering program like Columbia's, Cornell's, or Princeton's were regarded as suspect in comparison to schools like GTech, UMich, Berkeley, etc because there was a widespread stereotype among hardcore engineering firms that the Ivies tend to have weak engineering programs in comparison. He endured a share of barbs from colleagues/supervisors who graduated from GTech, Berkeley, UMich and moreso from those who graduated from MIT, Caltech, CMU, Stanford, etc.
@cobrat "That’s interesting as that sounds more like the Columbia SEAS of my uncle’s time in the 1950’s*, not what I’ve been hearing from Columbia SEAS undergrads in the last 2 decades.
If anything, most of the recent SEAS students/recent graduates I’ve met have the perception that their engineering curves are structured such even a 3.3 cum GPA means they are “barely/just above average”, not exceptional."
I was there last year and the student that took us around at admitted student days said the average for engineering is in the 2.9 - 3.1 range. He said that the average in The College is significantly higher.
I suppose it could be bad information from the student tour guide? However, you would think that the schools would want to be sure that their tour guides have their key facts correct.
UCB, Purdue has a high admit rate, but excellent school, so it has to distinguish the students somehow.
Where?? Or do you mean for getting into grad school? I can see it in undergrad for extremely high-demand programs (e.g., at my institution the demand for slots in the nursing program is about double the seats actually available), but those are rather uncommon outliers—certainly not an “often” thing at all. The usual requirement for prerequisites is a C- or higher.
All I could find on the web was a 2009 document from Columbia “AN AGENDA FOR THE FUTURE
Report of theTask Force on Undergraduate Education” that lists median grades by department. The medians range from 3.15 for chemistry up to 3.89 for music. The engineering grades are all over the map from a low of 3.36 for chemical engineering to a high of 3.65 for civil engineering.
(I’d post a link, but don’t know how to do a tidy one for a pdf.)
We did not, but sure did consider GPA requirements for keeping merit scholarships. 3.0 seemed to be the norm at most full tuition options.
I think in most major classes 1 SD below was a C+ or C.
At my university Biomedical Engineering required a 3.2 to enter the program, though that falls into your uncommon outliers I guess.
Though I think for all our major classes we needed a C or higher to pass. A C- would not have been passing for our major classes. For other random classes, like if I was majoring in Engineering and I got a C- in (or even a D- I think) in some Anthropology class, that would have been passing.
My school said the average in Engineering is 2.9 but I think that was meaning that any any time, the average GPA an engineering student has is a 2.9. The lowest may switch out of engineering, and the average grade in earlier classes tends to be lower than later classes. So by graduation the average GPA was probably more like 3.1 or 3.2.
Sure, but so what? The point is that these classes are purposely curved. Period. There is no ‘working in the (collective) students’ favor.
Such oversubscribed or impacted majors may be more common from a student’s point of view, since these are the ones more popular among students. I.e. lots of students may want to get into the few popular majors whose departments are at full capacity, while there are dozens of other departments with plenty of capacity to take all students who at least pass the prerequisites (may be something like 2.0 GPA with nothing lower than C-, or nothing lower than C, in all prerequisites).
Well, my kids’ schools can and did give low and failing grades, and students could choose to drop the course, take a risk (if early in the semester) to try to raise their grade to passing or better, or repeat a failed class the following semester or later with departmental permission. Schools each tend to have their own rules wrt how many classes or credits a student is allowed to repeat, how many times a student is permitted to repeat a particular class, and how repeated classes are factored into the GPA. I imagine that a school that allows grade replacement will report higher average GPA’s. (These will be recalculated upon applying to allopathic medical school, law school, some graduate schools, and by some employers.)
Criteria for being put on academic probation, returning to good standing, and fulfilling majors in Arts and Sciences also vary across schools, as do support services and availability of leveled classes. A medical withdrawal will generally wipe a semester clean such that attempted classes will not even count as “repeated” if taken again, but a student might want to avoid this if they do not want to interrupt a sequence of classes, since they would need to wait out at least a semester and apply for special permission to return. Sometimes schools will help students remain enrolled on a reduced schedule until their condition stabilizes.
There could be limits on the number of medical withdrawals a student attempts, limits on the number of semesters a student may remain enrolled, or limits on the number of credits a student is permitted to attempt before either graduating or being dismissed without a diploma.
Some schools in the past decade or two have instituted specific programs designed to cut attrition in engineering programs. These can include tutoring centers and leveled classes. Iirc, MIT has freshmen taking classes P/F, although I have no idea if this is actually reducing stress and competition and allowing students to focus on learning the material.
@dfbdfb - If you are curious, look up websites for engineering schools at assorted state schools, where many majors are impacted by high demand. Sometimes minimal grades for intro classes will be specified, class by class, along with number of repeated classes allowed, or number of “C” grades allowed. There are often minimal GPA’s for specific engineering majors, and usually there are higher requirements for transfer students (internal or external) than for continuing students.
Sometimes other departments or schools (such as an Education department or the Business School) will have minimal GPA requirements of 3.0 or possibly more, or specify a grade higher than a C as a pre-requisite for taking a specific higher-level class.