I hate it when teachers use unfavorable grading scales

[darkswordsman17]

Isn't the standard grading scale 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, 70-79 = C, 60-69 = D, and everything below that F?

 

[RavenSEAL]

Do you ever think before you post? At all?

 

[mwtgg]

I had a prof with that scale. I still got an A. You lose.

 

[TallBill]

I like the A, A-, etc scale however the downside is when your GPA gets compared to someone with the 4,3,2,1 scale because a 91 avg at one school /= a 91 avg at another.

 

[grrl]

Didn't you make a similar thread earlier this semester?

 

[darkswordsman17]

Didn't you make a similar thread earlier this semester?

Sorta. He was whining about classes in general, and tried acting like he was going to get screwed over by grading on a curve.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2124149&highlight=grades

 

[HamburgerBoy]

On a distantly related topic, I hate it when a professor makes tests so simple that anyone good at memorization can get a perfect score, yet full of enough unrelated material that people that forgetting one thing fucks you, since missing one question means that 15+% of the class got a better score. If you have just one low B/high C test you can forget your straight A, no matter that you get A's on the next two midterms and final exam.

(Just finished finals today.)

 

[busydude]

Isn't the standard grading scale 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, 70-79 = C, 60-69 = D, and everything below that F?

It depends on the professor.. one class I attended had >92 as A and the other had >88 as A.

 

[PieIsAwesome]

I had an A until my final, in my last class. Then I bombed the final, and brought it down to a B... Then she refused to give me extra credit. I bugged her about it for an hour after class.

I am worried about this. I basically had an A+ in one class up until the final this week. The final is 40% of the grade, and 4 problems, so each is 10%. I definitely fudged up a couple of those. I felt so cocky too after getting the only 100% on the midterm. All those gains screwed up so easily. :'(

 

[zinfamous]

Isn't the standard grading scale 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, 70-79 = C, 60-69 = D, and everything below that F?

tons of Universities have instituted the +/- system as standard in all departments for the better part of the past decade.

afaik, professors tend to have the chance to report what they want, but in the end, you are either a+, a, a-...on that transcript. but yeah, it matters nothing after a few years.

 

[ahenkel]

My sandy vagina detector just went nuts, am I in the right place?

 

[Dr. Zaus]

tons of Universities have instituted the +/- system as standard in all departments for the better part of the past decade.

afaik, professors tend to have the chance to report what they want, but in the end, you are either a+, a, a-...on that transcript. but yeah, it matters nothing after a few years.

QFT

GPA only matters if you are scraping by at less than a 3.0, You MUST go to THE TOP university for graduate work, You want to go to med-school or you are not smart enough to make up for your lower grades with great standardized test-scores.

Isn't the standard grading scale 90-100 = A, 80-89 = B, 70-79 = C, 60-69 = D, and everything below that F?

It is the common practice I have found in the US.

No one knows as there is no transparency in the process. We need wikileaks. Everyone knows this.

When everyone knows something they need to be reminded of what they know, lest they forget what they know and know not what is know by those who know.

Everyone knows this.

 

[darkswordsman17]

tons of Universities have instituted the +/- system as standard in all departments for the better part of the past decade.

afaik, professors tend to have the chance to report what they want, but in the end, you are either a+, a, a-...on that transcript. but yeah, it matters nothing after a few years.

Yeah, I've had all sorts of grading scales, I just thought the standard was 10 percent per letter. I actually had a class that had a tough grading scale (93-100 A, 85-92 B, 78-85 C, and so on). It was a tough class too (Calc I think), but the average was still like a 91. The teacher was really good though.

I hate schools trying to get creative about grades. We had multiple scales in high school. True GPA, incentive GPA, and then something else. Its like an arms race and we end up with the retards on eBay. A++++++++++++++++++++++. That's a GPA of 57, which ends up being a 2.9 on a true 4.0 GPA scale.

 

[zinfamous]

QFT

GPA only matters if you are scraping by at less than a 3.0, You MUST go to THE TOP university for graduate work, You want to go to med-school or you are not smart enough to make up for your lower grades with great standardized test-scores.



It is the common practice I have found in the US.



When everyone knows something they need to be reminded of what they know, lest they forget what they know and know not what is know by those who know.

Everyone knows this.

TOP university matters piss for Graduate school. Grad school is all about the program. All about your mentor. All about the field, where you happen to be, in which particular era. University name matters dick for Grad school.

It's who was there, at what time...and were you there, too?

 

[Dr. Zaus]

It's who was there, at what time...and were you there, too?

Yep. (your point was implied in my mind as I internally made fun of anyone who felt that they had to go to a "TOP" university, though it is not nice to be so internally belittling of people for their ignorance)

The only caveat I would add is that sometimes a people lack the personal knowledge that training is required or intellect to comprehend training and simply can't score well enough on their standardized test to overcome a low GPA.

When this is the case and it relegates the individual to, say, a bottom 10% program which will tend to have poor funding and tends not attract the kind of 'who' 'you' want to be around.

Or if you are doing something meaningless with your life... like trying to be a sociology professor.

 

[Dumac]

Maybe you should go to a real school? Every school I've ever attended it's been:
A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1...Never any distinction between A and A-. Same thing to me.

Although if that were the case here I might try a little harder...most of my grades tend to be in the 90-92 range, or 80-82 range. If I got an 88 I'd just feel like I should have tried harder to get the A.

I'm at a top 10 engineering school and we use + and -

 

[rcpratt]

If you use +/- is fairly irrelevant. GPAs are going to end up pretty much the same in the end. My school switched to +/- right after my freshman year I believe. Some professors chose to continue to only give our A/B/C/D/F too, which was fine.

Plenty (if not most) of top schools are using +/- now.

 

[alkemyst]

I liked the higher scales. Weeded out the idiots.

 

[Gibson486]

That's because you're at a dumbass school. At most real engineering schools, the minimum for an A is 90, sometimes 85, some classes even 80. Good luck with that.

Yup. In my circuits course, a 65 was an A....Hell, I got a B+ in physics and I never scored above a 50 on a test.

quit complaining, man.

 

[Gibson486]

A 3.96 or whatever looks so much less pretty than a 4.0

When you are in engineering, anything over a 3.8 is pretty equivalent to a 4.0 in my book.

 

[TecHNooB]

When you are in engineering, anything over a 3.8 is pretty equivalent to a 4.0 in my book.

agreed

 

[DrunkenSano]

I hate it when TridenT uses this forum as his emo livejournal account.

 

[Ninjahedge]

Ugh.


T, it does not matter. Colleges look at your GPA, not at your letter grade. You could have gotten a "Q" for all they care.

the only thing that made it difficult for me, way back when, was when AP classes got a "6" for an A, the less advanced (I forgot the name) got a "5", and the regular got a "4". So even if you got an "A" in art, it did not matter because that was a "C" in physics. (I could not take things like art or choir for credit, I had to "audit" them or it would hurt my GPA).

So do not worry about the letter scaling until it comes to the end. If an 85 means an A at the end of the year even though all your test papers said "B", so be it.

Just wait until you get a professor that still likes the Bell curve. Works great when you take a class with a bunch of dumbasses and a 45% can get you a B, but just wait until everyone gets 90% and above and your 92% is a "D".

 

[alkemyst]

Yup. In my circuits course, a 65 was an A....Hell, I got a B+ in physics and I never scored above a 50 on a test.

quit complaining, man.

What percentile's were those scores though?

Personally when I see tons of courses like this I don't get it. I have had one or two and it comes down to either the teacher not teaching the book right or the tests being far too advanced for the class level.

 

[TecHNooB]

What percentile's were those scores though?

Personally when I see tons of courses like this I don't get it. I have had one or two and it comes down to either the teacher not teaching the book right or the tests being far too advanced for the class level.

the best classes are the ones where the averages on exams are between 30-40 and the A is still an 85.