Do you think it's fair that A+s don't count while A-s decrease your GPA?

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Do you think it's fair that A+s don't count while A-s decrease your GPA?

  • Yes

    Votes: 87 48.6%

  • No

    Votes: 85 47.5%

  • Maybe

    Votes: 7 3.9%
  • Total voters
    179
I think it would be nice if an A+ could serve to boost your GPA more dramatically than an A, I know my GPA would have looked better if it had. That said, I don't think it should ever raise your GPA above 4.0, which I believe some schools do... tis odd, IMO. But yeah, life isn't fair.
 
At my school, an A+ gives you 4.3. A school without +/- might be more 'fair,' but life isn't fair. Complaining won't solve the problem 🙂
 
Yes. A+'s haven't even been offered in many of my classes and I know many other schools are the same, so there would be no standardization.
 
Grading's subjective anyway. There are better things to focus one's rage on.

ETA: I clicked on the wrong option in the poll. Oh well. Guess I wouldn't have deserved that A+ anyway.
 
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For the AMCAS yes I think it is fair, because it would put all of us that go to schools that don't have +/- at a disadvantage.
 
Grading is subjective enough as it is. I would prefer the +/- system be completely eliminated.

Adding an A+ means that kids at schools that inflate grades would have super inflated GPA's and kids at schools that are more strict would be forced to work that much harder just to be competitive.
 
I'm fairly sure AMCAS doesn't consider A+, so even if a school was to give a 4.3 for it there would be no difference.
 
I find it funny that AMCAS makes the effort to change A+'s to A's.
 
A+'s are not real. It would offset the scale too much, requiring it to be a 4.3 scale. If AMCAS were to adopt high school grading criteria they should also add 1.0 to honor courses 😛
 
Donald Juan said:
For the AMCAS yes I think it is fair, because it would put all of us that go to schools that don't have +/- at a disadvantage.
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But then isn't it unfair for those with with +/- sys who end up with a whole bunch of A-s?
 
monkeyMD said:
But then isn't it unfair for those with with +/- sys who end up with a whole bunch of A-s?
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No because every school has A-'s. Your logic would only apply if a school had A+'s and A-'s with no intermediate, and only then would it be unfair.
 
rossbossss said:
No because every school has A-'s. Your logic would only apply if a school had A+'s and A-'s with no intermediate, and only then would it be unfair.
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But it seems like some people are saying that they do not have a +/- system at all.
 
rossbossss said:
No because every school has A-'s. Your logic would only apply if a school had A+'s and A-'s with no intermediate, and only then would it be unfair.
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many shcools dont have A-'s actually : ( which is why its unfair
 
For some schools in Canada, AMCAS converts all A-, A and A+ (ie. 80+) to 4.0

Alas, I do not go to one of these magical schools.
 
honestly its not fair to me. My school doesn't have the +/- system, but from my friend's schools Tulane/Loyola and such in new orleans, they have the +/-.

A friend of mine is an accounting major and she had A+'s for 3 straight semesters and the most recent semester[spring 2011] she got 4 A+'s and one A- which dropped her GPA. Even though she's been getting straight A's, it just makes it look bad when your +'s cant offset -'s. Your reasoning should be like in physics +'s offset -'s so should grades!
 
A+ would really bring out a new level of competitiveness...to an unhealthy extreme in my opinion. Can you imagine... you HAVE to get 98%+ on almost anything to remain at the "A student" level.
 
Nymphicus said:
A+ would really bring out a new level of competitiveness...to an unhealthy extreme in my opinion. Can you imagine... you HAVE to get 98%+ on almost anything to remain at the "A student" level.
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Yes, yes ... so the gunners are bedridden with stress while the rest of us slackers are filling out our applications.
 
For the most part everyone has a choice of attending a college or not. If you really do/don't want +/- grading, don't attend a college that doesn't fit your criteria. Yes, I realize not everyone can have their pick of schools, but unless your parents are forcing you, you always have a choice to wait and enroll somewhere else.

The real issue here is that, as much as it's "unfair" to the A+ students that they don't get an advantage over the A students, is it fair to the students that get a GPA weight of 3.0 for their 89.4 when +/- students get a weight of 3.7? (This obviously depends on the courses' cutoffs, but for the sake of argument it gets the point across.) On the flipside, without +/- grading, 99-average students get the same GPA weight as 90.0 students. Is this fair? To echo everyone else, grade cutoffs can be completely arbitrary, and for many courses, no matter the subject, grading can be subjective. Grading itself is often unfair by nature. Some people oppose the idea of grades on this pretext alone. Why would the grading scale system be any more perfect?

Each system has its pros and cons, but the upper GPA limit must be the same across all schools for any semblance of comparison to be possible. The current system is the best we can do.
 
My school was a +/- system, but we didn't have A+ (just A, A-, B+, B, B-, so on). They're reasoning was that we didn't have D-'s so not having A+'s balanced it out.
 
TMDSAS counts an A- as a 4.00.

Woohoo!
 
NickNaylor said:
My undergrad used only standard letter grades and +'s when grading except for A+'s. It was awesome.
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Except when you apply to TMDSAS which rewards -'s and punishes +'s

EDIT - just saw you went to UG in TX....weird that they would do that lol.
 
Not sure why grades don't have some standardized scale, unfair that someone can get the upper hand in GPA just because their college calculates the grades without the -'s. But I agree that there should be something rewarding for going above whatever counts as an A. Grades like B-'s and C-'s can already **** up your GPA significantly... A damn C-, that is like below 2.0, might as well be failing at the point. Same with B-, you work your ass off and your grade still is technically a C since it falls below the 3.0 The A+ should a chance to bandaid these -'s.

The only places where -'s should be used are for D's. Just so there can at least be some tiny chance of someone "technically" passing, or at the very least getting some amount of GPA credit, even if it is only a meer 0.67.

But regardless, **** B-'s! That **** hurts. 🙁
 
My philosophy teacher graded my class on a
√+, √, √- scale. My film criticism professor gave us shamrock stickers on great reports, diamond stickers on average reports and a hand drawn smiley face whenever he ran out of stickers. Good ******* luck AMCAS.

Side note: I've been gone for awhile, what happened to All Students Forum?
 
rossbossss said:
No because every school has A-'s. Your logic would only apply if a school had A+'s and A-'s with no intermediate, and only then would it be unfair.
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My school doesn't have an A- or a B+, as stated above. It's been a godsend all the times that I should have gotten a A- or B-, but a PAIN IN THE ARSE, every time I worked my behind off and ended up with a B+ (but no actually credit for working that hard).
 
I think it is the absolutely unfair that A+'s don't count. They may have qualitative impact, but no quantitative effect.

However, if I didn't have any on my transcript, I'm sure I'd say it is fair and that "A+'s aren't real grades"... Hoping to keep competitive.
In reality it is clear as day to see the disparity, if someone does work better than a "B", they get a B+. If someone does worse than a "B" they get a B-. If someone does worse than an A, they get an A-. Yet if someone does better than an A, they are SOL.

Simple subjectivity due to one's own circumstances. As it currently stands, the mole of A+'s I keep only serve as a scarlet letter [of sorts] attesting to my genius.

Oh yea, and:
smiley_smug.gif
 
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yeah...i have so many A+s on my transcript...this isn't fair :laugh:
 
Most of the classes at my undergrad don't have A+'s and any that do are just for show and still counts as 4.0, so I think fair A+'s don't count xD
 
Avoidthetiger said:
My school doesn't have an A- or a B+, as stated above. It's been a godsend all the times that I should have gotten a A- or B-, but a PAIN IN THE ARSE, every time I worked my behind off and ended up with a B+ (but no actually credit for working that hard).
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Same with my school. This past year I missed an A in biochem by .5 percent. Boy, was I pissed. Though, I do feel like I skate by with an A-/B- most of the time 😀
 
My school didn't have the +/- system. Even if you scored over 100% in a class (extra credit on our exams because of low scores), you still only had an A in the class. It's like gpas in high school. Some schools don't have weighted classes, but others do. Is a 4.0 at a school that has unweighted gpas the same as a 4.0 at a school that does have weighted gpas? It's the same thing applying to medical schools--not every school grades the same way as another school.
 
What could possibly be fair about A+'s? That every school doesn't use +/- is ok because at the end of the day, if you ace them all you all end up with the same: 4.0. If one school can increase their grades up to 4.3 or whatever, then it's not only unfair, but it destroys the ability of schools to compare applicants.

Yes, if all schools allowed A+'s it would be fair but they don't so it's not.
 
Narmerguy said:
What could possibly be fair about A+'s? That every school doesn't use +/- is ok because at the end of the day, if you ace them all you all end up with the same: 4.0. If one school can increase their grades up to 4.3 or whatever, then it's not only unfair, but it destroys the ability of schools to compare applicants.

Yes, if all schools allowed A+'s it would be fair but they don't so it's not.
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+1. Some grade has to be the best a student can do, and in this case 4.0 is considered perfect. If you go to a school with only A, B, C or you go to a school with A, A-, B+, B, B- etc. or you go to a school with A+, A, A- etc, the only way to normalize all these scores is to set the highest common grade, an A, to be "perfect." Sure, an A+ is better than an A at schools with A+ as a possibility, but counting A+ as a 4.3 when many (most?) schools do not have an equivalent makes a 1:1 comparison between the schools impossible. By defaulting an A+ to an A, someone who scored a perfect 100% of possible points in their class at University A is on an equal footing with the student who scored 100% of possible points at University A+.

For the schools without + or -, it evens out since an A- is rounded up while a B+ is rounded down. I do agree though that I would be frustrated with getting a B instead of a B+, but I would likewise be overjoyed getting a 4.0 for my A-'s.
 
theseeker4 said:
+1. Some grade has to be the best a student can do, and in this case 4.0 is considered perfect. If you go to a school with only A, B, C or you go to a school with A, A-, B+, B, B- etc. or you go to a school with A+, A, A- etc, the only way to normalize all these scores is to set the highest common grade, an A, to be "perfect." Sure, an A+ is better than an A at schools with A+ as a possibility, but counting A+ as a 4.3 when many (most?) schools do not have an equivalent makes a 1:1 comparison between the schools impossible. By defaulting an A+ to an A, someone who scored a perfect 100% of possible points in their class at University A is on an equal footing with the student who scored 100% of possible points at University A+.
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So right! The top grade possible needs to be set to a 4.0 scale to equalize. In reality it would be more fair to set the A+ as a 4.0 and shift everything else down in value for the AMCAS GPA recalculation.

So really, the people with A+'s get "perfect score credit" for two grade values (A and A+) when people at non-A+ school only get perfect credit for A's.
 
schwabejr said:
So right! The top grade possible needs to be set to a 4.0 scale to equalize. In reality it would be more fair to set the A+ as a 4.0 and shift everything else down in value for the AMCAS GPA recalculation.

So really, the people with A+'s get "perfect score credit" for two grade values (A and A+) when people at non-A+ school only get perfect credit for A's.
Click to expand...

I personally don't like this idea. Why force the people at A+ schools to have to get an A+ (presumably 98%+) to get an equal mark to schools that only give out A's but at 94%? The system is fine the way it is. Why some schools feel compelled to give out A+'s while others don't is somewhat debatable but we should just accept that the rough equivalent of everything above an A- is 4.0.

MeowMeowCAT said:
lol, a 3.3 will not get you anywhere!!!

/SDN user
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:laugh: If you have a 3.3 cumulative it certainly won't.
 
Wow. It's almost 50/50 thus far.
I still think A+s should somehow work FOR us...
can't believe AMCAS goes through the trouble to change the A+s to As. How is that fair anyway? Med schools don't even get to see our A+s??
 
Too lazy to read the whole thread but...

A- sure do hurt the nuts...
 
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