College Students: How does the Standard Deviation affect your grade?

[Scrapster]

Say you get a test score and the prof says the Average Mean was 50 points and the deviation was 10 points. Now, how does this mean affect your personal score?

 

[Scrapster]

Is the mean usually set at 2.0?

 

[Cat]

It varies greatly. Some professors will set a standard and stick to it, with no curving. For others, it may be arbitrary. I assume others will try to fit the standard curve to the one produced by the class, and go from there.

At the Engineering School at the University of Virginia, 20 points above the mean will typically get you an A.

 

[thereds]

Why would it affect your personal score if the professor just gave you these numbers?

You get what you get.

Unless ofcourse, the prof. uses a bell curve to determine the range of scores and then gives some additional points.

 

[Scrapster]

Will you be considered in the curve if you're 2 points below or above the mean?

 

[DannyLove]

so whats the score?

danny~!

 

[Scrapster]

I don't have a score, just throw in some hypotheticals.

48
52
61
39

 

[josphstalinator]

the mean in most of my classes at berkeley is 3.0-3.1

 

[Ferocious]

heh, I remember a class in electromagnetics I took more than a decade ago.

The first test was a killer. About 25 or so students and the average like a 23 (out of 100). I had around the 5th highest or so with something like a 42 which was a "B" grade.

5 was passing with a "D" grade. LOL. There were several ZEROS and I think the highest was around a 60.

Needless to say, that test was a tough one.:disgust:

 

[yellowperil]

I had an organic chemistry prof who refused to curve. True, he used a more generous scale (20 pt scale), but his tests pretty much weeded me out from the med school hopefuls.

 

[Ameesh]

std deviation means a certain percentage away from average 1 std dev away from mean will put you in like 86 percentile 2 will put you in 92 i think, its gets smaller and smaller then, if you get a little bit better than one std dev away from the mean you should probably get an A. I highly reccomend taking a statistics class to get a better understanding, its pretty importnat stuff, plus you'll learn how to gamble better (or gamble less )

 

[Scrapster]

The admission requirement to my school didn't require a course in statistics. Just about all classes use it but no one has explained it to me.

 

[FrontlineWarrior]

at my school the way we use std. deviation is to estimate what grade you got. so if the class average is a 75, and standard deviation is 10, and the class average is by definition a C+/B-, then an 85 is like one grade higher, a B+/A-, and so on. i don't know what the statistical details of std. dev. but generally it's a good rule of thumb in figuring out your performance on a curved exam.

 

[ElFenix]

my profs stopped using bell curves to grade when i started having 25 people classes. its simply stupid to use one. instead they now find grade clumps, the 1st clump is As, the 2nd clump is Bs, and so forth.