Does majority of the science professors curve grades?

[AestheticGod]

I'm going to a university for fall and my current GPA is above a 3.6. But I'm scared that it's gonna drop once i go to university level. From what i noticed, majority of the professors do the "4exams. Each exam worth 25% of your grade." or something of that nature.

If i messed up to even get a 'B' on one exam..i'm fuked lol. It kind of amazes me how some of you guys are keeping up in the 3.7-4.0 range...

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[BABSstudent]

Depends on the class. At my school, sometimes they curve the class. Very rarely is a test curved. However, the class curve is almost never more than 2%. One of my classes was curved and they just made the top score in the class a 93%, which meant the person who got a 92% got a 93% and an A. Not really something major. Another class, the professor wrote tests so the class average was about 40%. I averaged getting 60-70s on all the tests and my score on the final was a 56%. I got a B+ in the course after the curve (professor gave the average score a C- grade and then worked up and down from there).

I have learned to not bank on a curve. Just study and get the A without the curve. It involves studying, but it is totally manageable. And sometimes you don't want a curve in the class. A true curve gives an equal number of people A's as they give out F's.

 

[Ansar]

Personal anecdote: At Cornell, honors courses are curved to a B+, so one s.d. above mean puts you at an 'A' :thumbsup:

 

[DAPI]

Had one science professor "curve" by making the test as had as hell so basically the average was around a 40 with only one or two people ever even breaking 80 and then pretty much assigned grades somewhat arbitrarily from there.

A psychology professor curved by just doing a straight curve, meaning that the high score on an exams/assignments was the total points possible for that exam and then he just used the raw points you earned and divided by the new total possible points for a final grade. Boy was that an easy class lol

But other than that I did not have professors curving grades. Almost every one of my classes was the traditional 93=A, 90=A-, 87=B+, 83=B, 80=B-, etc.

 

[mapandterritory]

Only my A&P professor ever bumped people's final grades up slightly if he felt they deserved it. I have a 4.0 sGPA so far, but I also still have to take biochemistry, etc.It depends on the professor/school. If you get your professors to like you, they can make your life easier, even if you don't need the curve.

 

[BABSstudent]

Yep, pretty much all of mine were the standard grades 93=A, 90=A-, 87=B+, 83=B, 80=B-, etc.
Except for my Spanish classes...
95=A, 91=A-, 89=B+, 85=B, 82=B-, etc.
You mess up one test and you missed your A by a long shot. There was no curving in any of my Spanish classes. Got to love the, here is the verb in the infinitive. Now conjugate it correctly, and it can be any of the 20 verb tenses that we have learned so far, but only one of them is correct.
You really get into semantics when you put down hizo and don't get any points because the answer is ha hecho (He made versus he has made). The plus side of learning Spanish is you learn a lot about how we speak English grammatically incorrect all the time.

 

[wololololololo]

Curves are definitely class dependent, but get used to having 2-3 tests/projects be the majority of your grade.

 

[StuartManor]

So far at my school I haven't taken any courses where the professor curved the grade. In fact some of them stated in bold on the syllabus that the course would not be curved.
Grading seems similar to you guys though. 2-4 tests a semester (and maybe a project), so one messy score and it's over with. At the end of a semester my comparative anatomy prof decided she would try curving the grades in an attempt to help out the hideousness that was going on the other premed transcripts, but I seriously broke the curve so no grades were shifted. Oh well, I did great so I'm not complaining.

 

[jjesque]

I'm pretty amazed at some of the grading schemes here -- 95 for an A, really? At my school, the grading scheme was standard for all classes and an 80 was an A-, an 85 was an A. Then again, the course averages in premed classes were still C's (65's at my school) so I guess it all balances out?

My school also didn't "curve" to a normal distribution, exactly. We did linear adjustments so, if the average was too high by 5%, every student would be adjusted down by 5%.

 

[blub1212]

I'm pretty amazed at some of the grading schemes here -- 95 for an A, really? At my school, the grading scheme was standard for all classes and an 80 was an A-, an 85 was an A. Then again, the course averages in premed classes were still C's (65's at my school) so I guess it all balances out?

My school also didn't "curve" to a normal distribution, exactly. We did linear adjustments so, if the average was too high by 5%, every student would be adjusted down by 5%.

What?? Where do you go to school?

In response to the OP, as others have stated, it will be professor dependent. I only had two classes that were curved on the normal distribution and a couple classes that just lowered the grade for an A (but I never had a class that went below a 90 for an A).

 

[Midwestern Blot]

In my experience, they usually does. It depends where you go to school.

 

[Midifelder10]

Depends on the school. SD away from median is a flavor of A for some institutions.

 

[jjesque]

What?? Where do you go to school?

In response to the OP, as others have stated, it will be professor dependent. I only had two classes that were curved on the normal distribution and a couple classes that just lowered the grade for an A (but I never had a class that went below a 90 for an A).

Not going to say...but I think we can safely say that the absolute cutoff for an A is not indicative of the difficulty of the school, especially when the median GPA at my school is ~2.6...

 

[polymathg]

It depends on how bad everybody does in the class. Both my physics classes were curved so 88 was A-

 

[SN1]

I'm going to a university for fall and my current GPA is above a 3.6. But I'm scared that it's gonna drop once i go to university level. From what i noticed, majority of the professors do the "4exams. Each exam worth 25% of your grade." or something of that nature.

If i messed up to even get a 'B' on one exam..i'm fuked lol. It kind of amazes me how some of you guys are keeping up in the 3.7-4.0 range...

It all depends on the professors. Some will curve and some will NOT. I did 2 years at a community college and completed all of my prereqs there with a 4.0 and just finished my first semester at a 4 year university this spring. Overall the difficulty is not MUCH different than CC but I must say that university classes demand more work. Also, I took two science classes that semester and 1 of my prof was amazing and was very helpful but the other basically taught next to nothing. In either case, NONE of them curved the class.

So my point is that each professor is different and you just have to smart when picking the out.

Yeah I also noticed that most university professors calculate your final grade SOLELY on test grades while CC professors give out some quizzes and sometimes attendance(5%) LMAO.

Get ready for a big transition man!!

good luck

 

[angemon89]

I transitioned last year and so far most of my classes have been curved. Knowing that my classes are curved actually takes A LOT of the pressure off (at least for me). For example, I took the first part of Ochem at my community college and was constantly stressed out about my grade because I had to stay above 90% in both the lab and lecture. At my university, I finished ochem and my averages were at least 40 points above the average, which as you can imagine, took much of the stress away.

If you really want your A, you just have to study a little more than most people and as long as you do better than them, you will get your A's thanks to the curve.