Do some professors like giving out low grades?

[StephanieZ]

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It's nice what you're saying but realistically, you could get a B+ in a class and still know more about that class than the person who got the A. The person with the A just tested well. The person with the B+ could very well get the "Big picture" and apply the concepts to real life better.

The basis of my post is on that idea. Isn't it better to understand what's going on instead of just getting a letter grade?

I agree with you on that. That is how I felt on my first histology test. I practically memorized the book. I understood everything on a broad-picture scale. I had a great general understanding of the material. What he tested on, though, were minute, arbitrary details. On the first test where I studied the book but did terrible, I felt like I understood the material better than on the second test where I studied only his lectures and got an A. I agree getting an A is just as much about playing whatever game your instructor wants to play as it is about understanding anything.

 

[music2doc]

I agree with you on that. That is how I felt on my first histology test. I practically memorized the book. I understood everything on a broad-picture scale. I had a great general understanding of the material. What he tested on, though, were minute, arbitrary details. On the first test where I studied the book but did terrible, I felt like I understood the material better than on the second test where I studied only his lectures and got an A. I agree getting an A is just as much about playing whatever game your instructor wants to play as it is about understanding anything.

It sounds like the second time around you figured out how to identify what your prof cares about. Understanding what s/he finds key is a huge part of the puzzle. It sounds like the first time, you simply tried to memorize EVERYTHING and as a result didn't really "get" it in the right way.

 

[whatsupdoc49]

I once had a professor that claimed he had not ever, and will not ever give out an A. He did not lie.

 

[KaplanKrackers]

I think there are two reasons professors don't like to give A's.

The first is that they love to think they are 'hard'. No one wants a reputation as being an easy professor, bc there is a correlation in most peoples' minds between hard classes and good classes. Being an 'easy' professor makes you look like a ninth grade health teacher.

The second is that their expectations are too high. Once a professor has been in a field for decades, the material becomes like second nature. I've noticed this particularly in Ochem. Ochem profs can't seem to understand why on earth it's not obvious that grignard's can't be used with alcohol, or how students could possibly think that toluene is optically active. They have trouble sympathizing with the difficulty of their class, and so assume their students don't put in that much effort when test grades are low.

Then, of course, a small minority are just ***holes.

 

[iggles]

A few semesters ago a chem class did better than expected on a midterm (the avg was above a 50 percent). My professor assumed they cheated, rewrote the exam (made it a lot harder) and got the average he wanted. He has only given out 5 A's in the past 5 years he taught at my school. He is a horrible horrible man.
edit: The same professor decided to add an extra chapter to an exam 2 lectures beforehand because a student asked a dumb question in class.

 

[n3xa]

The world would be a better place if everyone adopted your mentality of responsibility.

This. Oh God this.

Getting those dreaded "but I tried really hard" emails at the end of the semester make me cry.

 

[music2doc]

I think there are two reasons professors don't like to give A's.

The first is that they love to think they are 'hard'. No one wants a reputation as being an easy professor, bc there is a correlation in most peoples' minds between hard classes and good classes. Being an 'easy' professor makes you look like a ninth grade health teacher.

The second is that their expectations are too high. Once a professor has been in a field for decades, the material becomes like second nature. I've noticed this particularly in Ochem. Ochem profs can't seem to understand why on earth it's not obvious that grignard's can't be used with alcohol, or how students could possibly think that toluene is optically active. They have trouble sympathizing with the difficulty of their class, and so assume their students don't put in that much effort when test grades are low.

Then, of course, a small minority are just ***holes.

To be honest, if those are your best examples of ochem professors being "too hard" I can't really agree with you. Sure, some profs probably do expect unreasonable results, but the kinds of examples you gave require a pretty basic understanding of the core concepts. If a student is getting to grignards (an ochem 2 concept) without understanding why an alcohol couldn't be used with one, that student probably didn't get a solid conceptual understanding of ochem 1. In the toluene example, all one needs to know to easily figure out it can't be optically active is the structure and the definition of chirality.

 

[pfaction]

I dunno man, a lot of teachers nowadays seem to be way too easy on grading. I'd rather have all teachers grade harshly because I want to be treated by a doctor who tries hard and knows what he is doing, not someone who was babied through college before entering medical school.

My doctor got a B- in Organic?
NEW DOCTOR PLEASE, DR. INCOMPETENT ISN'T FOR ME

 

[MeowMeowCAT]

I prefer professors that are mute about their grading policy, so everything is not so cut and dry. You know that say something like "generally less than a 55 means you are failing" and that is it, they don't go in detail such as 79.99 is a C+. I find those usually are less stressful classes especially when the material we are being tested on is not easy to begin with.

Meh, in the end you get into schools because of your grades now because you actually learned something. Sure we have the mcat to actually show what we know, but you can study for that, so most of the stuff that is not get covered by the mcat you might not actually be responsible for.


But whatever though, what we have now, the emphasis on grading is not a perfect system, but honestly I do not know of a decent alternative.

 

[Silverfalcon]

This is something I've dealt with more than once. There is always that professor that makes a class needlessly hard and enjoys giving C's, D's, and F's even when you try to work with them to get a better grade. I've got this one professor who will not tell you what is on a test, will not give you a formula sheet, and will not do an in-class review before the test. In fact, the class before the test was on new material. And he has the nerve to say "I am rooting for you guys and I hope you all do well."

What's up with this? Don't they know about AMCAS? Don't they know that I will never be interested in repeating the course?

If I was a professor and most students failed my class, I would think something was wrong with how I was teaching the class. Why are some professors like this and why are there others who will be flexible and work with you to get the best grade you can get? It's professors like this who keep kids out of med school.

You make it sound like you've never been challenged in your life. Really, you are complaining because a professor didn't allow you to use a formula sheet? And do you really expect them to care about your AMCAS?

Not to be harsh, but I will - this is a part of reasons why some professors have become that way because they are sick of premed students calling out their "entitlement" for high grades. If you are not getting the grade you deserve, it is not always the professor, but often, the students. Now, unless you tell me you spent days in professor's office, read the chapters back to front, retyped your notes, redid the homework problems, went to TAs, and spent time studying with other peers who WERE doing well (seriously, there is rarely a class where everyone fails - there's at least someone who's doing well) - and it still didn't work out, then I have no sympathy for you. Try harder.

 

[MeowMeowCAT]

this is one of reasons why some professors have become that way because they are sick of premed students calling out their "entitlement" for high grades.

Yeeeeeah, how about professors not do that. Probably one of the annoyances of being a science major was the general assumption of "Oh great it is just another premed". It was especially apparent in the prerequisite classes, not so much in later classes that are not specific to the biology major.

Damn premeds!

 

[Narmerguy]

This is a logical fallacy. You are using hypothetical outliers to "prove" your point. Outliers, by definition, do not represent the rest of the population. Could a specific B+ student understand the concepts better than a specific A student? Sure. Is this generally the case? Clearly not (by definition).

I don't think we could really call this a "logical fallacy" in the classic sense. But I understand what you're saying.

 

[KaplanKrackers]

To be honest, if those are your best examples of ochem professors being "too hard" I can't really agree with you. Sure, some profs probably do expect unreasonable results, but the kinds of examples you gave require a pretty basic understanding of the core concepts. If a student is getting to grignards (an ochem 2 concept) without understanding why an alcohol couldn't be used with one, that student probably didn't get a solid conceptual understanding of ochem 1. In the toluene example, all one needs to know to easily figure out it can't be optically active is the structure and the definition of chirality.

Haha, I couldn't think of anything harder off the top of my head. Bad examples, those things are pretty obvious, but my point remains (btw I didn't do poorly in Ochem).

 

[nisarg2010]

This is something I've dealt with more than once. There is always that professor that makes a class needlessly hard and enjoys giving C's, D's, and F's even when you try to work with them to get a better grade. I've got this one professor who will not tell you what is on a test, will not give you a formula sheet, and will not do an in-class review before the test. In fact, the class before the test was on new material. And he has the nerve to say "I am rooting for you guys and I hope you all do well."

What's up with this? Don't they know about AMCAS? Don't they know that I will never be interested in repeating the course?

If I was a professor and most students failed my class, I would think something was wrong with how I was teaching the class. Why are some professors like this and why are there others who will be flexible and work with you to get the best grade you can get? It's professors like this who keep kids out of med school.

Welcome to the life of an Engineering student 🙂

 

[FattySlug]

Try to go school in Korea or Vietnam. They make it a point to test things outside the textbook in high school. If you only know how to do sample problems then the best you can hope for is a 5 out of 10.

I have this one chemistry teacher,a very good one, in high school who seriously entertains himself by humiliating students in the class. He even wondered aloud why somebody who is as stupid as a cow could be in his class. So American professors are generally nice and polite; they might not be as helpful as you want them to be but at least they don't set out to embarrass you.

 

[Little Justice]

If I was a professor and most students failed my class, I would think something was wrong with how I was teaching the class.

I've taught university classes, and in some of my classes I've seen way less than 50% attendance on any given day. If half the students aren't in class, why wouldn't I expect half the class to fail?

Just because you paid for the class, worked hard, and want to go to med school doesn't mean you deserve a good grade in the class.

It's the challenging classes that teach you the most, actually prepare you for harder med school classes, and gives you the satisfaction of earning a good grade.

Professors really don't owe you a good grade. It's not the professors fault if you don't get into med school.

👍 👍 👍

As a former graduate student TA I have found that those who actually came to office hours and asked questions about how to improve/understand were the ones that were getting A's already. Despite the fact that I always had an open door policy and encouraged my students to seek out other TAs if I wasn't doing a good enough job explaining things, more often than not I would only see a student come into my office to haggle for grades after the fact.

This is probably a universal experience for college TA's and professors. C, D, and F students only want to talk about grades. A and B students want to talk about the material. There are exceptions of course, but that break down covers 90% of the students.

 

[DrGonz]

[/QUOTE]This is probably a universal experience for college TA's and professors. C, D, and F students only want to talk about grades. A and B students want to talk about the material. There are exceptions of course, but that break down covers 90% of the students.[/QUOTE]

I understand your viewpoint here. But applying this point to the thread, I have to disagree. When it comes to kids discussing whether the teacher always gives out C/D/F I think thats its more of the A/B students discussing it. Its when that A/B student goes into a class and receives that C when discussion like this is started. I speak from experience. Had a teacher who refused to give anything more than a B- in a class. I took 2 classes w/ him (orgo1/2) and recieved C+ in both while busting my balls to learn the material. He would mark entire synthesis rxns wrong for missing the smallest thing (forgetting to draw an e- flow arrow or something).

Now I will contradict my statement slightly b/c even though I got a C+ in that class, I did learn alot. I retook orgo 2 at a diff university to brush up before the MCAT and i got an easy A. So the first teach did force me to learn the material, but he just wouldn't give anyone the grade....

wow i rambled a little sorry, infection disease class has friend my brain..😕

 

[robbieflick]

At many schools (this is definitely the case at CU Denver) there are certain classes - O chem I in particular - whose sole purpose is to weed out the huge herd of kids thinking they're going to go into a health career. The class is traditionally poorly taught and demands students to work their butts off to figure out the material on their own. Sure, organic chemistry is helpful as you're learning biochemistry; but I believe it's role is to weed out the kids who either can't understand the material, or can't gather the energy to spend a week on one really difficult problem.

An aside - as a TA, I noticed a definite correlation between # of times students checked their grade on blackboard, and their actual grade. There's a study in there somewhere 🙂

 

[Medicine4Bruhs]

From someone who willingly re-did my physics series as an undergraduate student to take the "harder" physical chemistry class taught by a man who believed that women were inferior beings and shouldn't be chemists, I feel your pain and frustration.

If this were true, then women would be paid similarly to men for the same amount of work.

/gahthisisgonnabefun

 

[Web MD]

Titration skillz are practiced in a lab, but refined in a kitchen