Should Professors Stop Grading on a Bell Curve?

[LizzyM]

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No LizzyM you're too easy on your students you should be intentionally failing them so that your school appears more academically rigorous than others.

I only teach grad students (and med students). No one fails grad students. Med students rarely fail an exam and if they do, they get one or two chances for a "do over" before being required to repeat the year.

 

[Cotterpin]

If people were actually being taught how to think about a new and difficult topic, why are they still getting low averages over and over? On the first exam I can understand that because it's new. But by the second midterm, if [figurative] you are as good a student as you claim you are, your grade should go up. That they stay down is either a reflection on the professor's ineptitude (just because you're a Nobel Laureate doesn't make you a good teacher; just because someone is a HoF player doesn't make them a good coach) or the students' lack of knowledge about the material or ability to grasp it.

Some students did see improvement over the course. Some students didn't. Some students were going to crush every exam no matter what. I just can't with your attitude that your education was superior to mine just because your school's exam averages were higher than mine. By your logic, if all of your exam averages were high over and over, how can you argue that anyone was challenged and forced to improve over the course? Wouldn't you have to conclude that your exams were too easy?

 

[Lost in Translation]

Some students did see improvement over the course. Some students didn't. Some students were going to crush every exam no matter what. I just can't with your attitude that your education was superior to mine just because your school's exam averages were higher than mine. By your logic, if all of your exam averages were high over and over, how can you argue that anyone was challenged and forced to improve over the course? Wouldn't you have to conclude that your exams were too easy?

I went into gen chem knowing ZERO because my high school teacher couldn't teach worth a salt. On my first ever gen chem midterm I studied my ass off and scored a 91. I got complacent for the second one and scored a low 70 (it might have even been a high 60), which was below the average. If it really was too easy I should have breezed right through it. I stopped ****ing around and scored like a 95 on the cumulative final. All the averages of exams for that class were mid 70s. The course was graded via cutoffs, not a curve (not that it's relevant).

 

[Lucca]

In the case of my school, that's exactly what the low averages meant. Please don't assume that your school was somehow exceptional and genuinely challenging with smarter students, whereas other people's schools were just stupidly hard and mindless just for the sake of it. That's very condescending.

I actually don't think this at all. There are good students and there are good teachers and the metrics we typically use to gauge how good each group is are poor. Universities are just institutions, they either help good students thrive or hold them back but there is nothing intrinsic about them that guarantees it's students or teachers to be of a higher quality. It's true for Harvard, it's true for Kent state.

 

[LizzyM]

Some students did see improvement over the course. Some students didn't. Some students were going to crush every exam no matter what. I just can't with your attitude that your education was superior to mine just because your school's exam averages were higher than mine. By your logic, if all of your exam averages were high over and over, how can you argue that anyone was challenged and forced to improve over the course? Wouldn't you have to conclude that your exams were too easy?

This is the reason that some educational experts are urging a transition to competency based education. You should be able to demonstrate an ability to do x, y and z. What is taught and tested has to line-up with one or more competencies. Here's an example from chemistry:
Be able to identify fundamental reaction types, especially acid-base, precipitation, and oxidation-reduction, as well as descriptive chemistry of simple inorganic ions and molecules.

There may even be an argument made to grade pass/fail that you are or are not competent in chemistry depending on whether you can demonstrate that you have mastered the material and can meet the competencies.

 

[Cotterpin]

I went into gen chem knowing ZERO because my high school teacher couldn't teach worth a salt. On my first ever gen chem midterm I studied my ass off and scored a 91. I got complacent for the second one and scored a low 70 (it might have even been a high 60), which was below the average. If it really was too easy I should have breezed right through it. I stopped ****ing around and scored like a 95 on the cumulative final. All the averages of exams for that class were mid 70s. The course was graded via cutoffs, not a curve (not that it's relevant).

Okay. And how do you use that one anecdotal experience you had to determine that my school wasn't as challenging as yours?

 

[Lost in Translation]

This is the reason that some educational experts are urging a transition to competency based education. You should be able to demonstrate an ability to do x, y and z. What is taught and tested has to line-up with one or more competencies. Here's an example from chemistry:
Be able to identify fundamental reaction types, especially acid-base, precipitation, and oxidation-reduction, as well as descriptive chemistry of simple inorganic ions and molecules.

There may even be an argument made to grade pass/fail that you are or are not competent in chemistry depending on whether you can demonstrate that you have mastered the material and can meet the competencies.

In that model, what would be the metric to separate those who simply understand the material to those that have a mastery of it?

 

[Lost in Translation]

Okay. And how do you use that one anecdotal experience you had to determine that my school wasn't as challenging as yours?

I never said my school was more challenging than yours. I did imply that the student body at my school might be more talented.

But that's all a function of the student. There were some really smart people and some really dumb people. I'm sure that's the case at your school as well.

 

[Cotterpin]

I never said my school was more challenging than yours. I did imply that the student body at my school might be more talented.

But that's all a function of the student. There were some really smart people and some really dumb people. I'm sure that's the case at your school as well.

Why on Earth would you do that?

 

[787593]

.

 

[MareNostrummm]

Why on Earth would you do that?

lol... what a dick

 

[salemstein]

Srsly not a fan of the curve. I once had a class where an 90% got you a B because of the curve. Also had a chem class where I sat next to someone who got a medal at the international chem olympics on one side and someone who won ISEF on the other. Sure, like 30-40% of the class got As, but did I get one despite studying multiple hours every night for the class? Nope.

 

[Lost in Translation]

Why on Earth would you do that?

Because we had higher averages on material that is more or less universal, with the variables being how it's taught and how well the students grasp the material? You can argue that your exams are tougher but until you post up a question taken from one of your exams so we can compare what's being asked and how, it's all anecdotal. If your professors aren't testing what they teach, that's their fault. If they're testing what they do teach and your averages are still lower, then that doesn't reflect well on the students. And I'm having a hard time believing that your professors would ask a 6 part synthesis question on an orgo test.

 

[Sardinia]

This is the reason that some educational experts are urging a transition to competency based education. You should be able to demonstrate an ability to do x, y and z. What is taught and tested has to line-up with one or more competencies. Here's an example from chemistry: Be able to identify fundamental reaction types, especially acid-base, precipitation, and oxidation-reduction, as well as descriptive chemistry of simple inorganic ions and molecules. There may even be an argument made to grade pass/fail that you are or are not competent in chemistry depending on whether you can demonstrate that you have mastered the material and can meet the competencies.

The farce lies within the curriculum. Let's apply a competency expectation to a laboratory course. It is unreasonable for someone to perfect their techniques on recrystallization, filitration, or extraction related experiments when the lab only dedicates one or maybe two experiments for just one day. Undergraduate curricula currently operate as a survey course a la carte with professors simply trying to give students a taste of what it means to be a research student and not holding accountability for actual results. This devalues the meaning of a degree that could hold much more value in the market if students were held to higher standards.

Students interested in research initiate the search themselves and attempt to find sympathetic professors who are willing to incorporate them into their research. Our curriculum attempted to encourage research oriented skills forcing students to make a hypothesis and then design their own experiments with a limited budget. Because there were no standards for solid bench work, the lack of skill resulted in many groups of students being unable to ultimately verify their hypothesis due to contamination, pipette error, or a lack of sample (too many tries).

 

[LizzyM]

In that model, what would be the metric to separate those who simply understand the material to those that have a mastery of it?

Either you have mastered it or you have not. You can do long division or you still stumble. Once you can do it, you've mastered it and can move on.

 

[Cotterpin]

Because we had higher averages on material that is more or less universal, with the variables being how it's taught and how well the students grasp the material? You can argue that your exams are tougher but until you post up a question taken from one of your exams so we can compare what's being asked and how, it's all anecdotal.

I don't have such a huge chip on my shoulder that I would go dig up, scan in, and post a question from an exam I took three years ago to try to prove to a stranger on the internet that I am smarter than him.

Either you have mastered it or you have not. You can do long division or you still stumble. Once you can do it, you've mastered it and can move on.

I see what you mean with this concept, but doesn't it all depend on what the goal of education is supposed to be? I'm sure it depends on what you're teaching and to what purpose. Do you not worry that the freaky people at the very top of the class will get bored if all they have to do is show that they can do an average long division problem and then move on? Don't you think there's value in putting a student up against something very difficult and then forcing them to push themselves to break through?

 

[Lost in Translation]

Either you have mastered it or you have not. You can do long division or you still stumble. Once you can do it, you've mastered it and can move on.

So then you would test competency in every chapter within the overarching course? i.e. A test solely on acid-base, a test solely on oxidation-reduction, a test solely on precipitation, and either you score 100% = mastered or you get a few wrong, score an 80%, and you've not mastered it and are merely just competent?

 

[Lost in Translation]

I don't have such a huge chip on my shoulder that I would go dig up, scan in, and post a question from an exam I took three years ago to try to prove to a stranger on the internet that I am smarter than him.

You were the one implying that everyone in your class was the best of the best but the professors just wanted to fail everyone, and anyone who scored a higher score at a different institution wasn't challenged enough.

 

[LizzyM]

The farce lies within the curriculum. Let's apply a competency expectation to a laboratory course. It is unreasonable for someone to perfect their techniques on recrystallization, filitration, or extraction related experiments when the lab only dedicates one or maybe two experiments for one day of the week. The same goes for proponents of encouraging a research oriented curriculum. Because there are no standards in undergrad for develop solid bench work, the lack of skill makes students unable to verify their hypothesis.

That begs the question, what should be the competency expected of undergraduate students in laboratory courses? Baby steps. One develops the competencies and then develops the instruction and experiential learning so that students can meet the competencies.

Here's an article about how this is being done at three midwestern schools (Michigan, Wisconsin & Purdue). https://www.insidehighered.com/news...ation-arrives-three-major-public-institutions

 

[Cotterpin]

You were the one implying that everyone in your class was the best of the best but the professors just wanted to fail everyone, and anyone who scored a higher score at a different institution wasn't challenged enough.

I didn't imply that at all. You inferred that. I certainly didn't say that the professors wanted everyone to fail. You might want to read back through the thread a bit. 😵

 

[Sardinia]

That begs the question, what should be the competency expected of undergraduate students in laboratory courses? Baby steps. One develops the competencies and then develops the instruction and experiential learning so that students can meet the competencies.

One of the problems I find with current curricula is the forced tie in of laboratory courses to validate subject courses as being "actual hard science courses". Classes like analytical chemistry should be the de facto standard as the first course all students must take in order to get a solid basis in laboratory science with respect to techniques and methods. In addition, laboratory classes should occur more than once or twice a week. I believe that there should be three sections to any given laboratory class, the first one being a theory oriented class that forces students to propose the experiment and also present a lab notebook with the steps planned out along with considerations like: time, cost of reagents, and areas of error. If students aren't prepared for lab, they shouldn't be allowed to participate because they will be simply wasting the cost of reagents and upkeep for supplies.

The second section should be the first run for students. This run should involve preceptor involved review of the students as they perform this run and supervision. This is similar to the current model where students run the lab and write a paper. However, in lieu of a typical lab paper including verbatim background information from the textbook, students should focus on the analytical section where they seriously note all the mistakes that led to errors in the experiment.

The third section is the performance run where students receive no instruction and must perform the lab on themselves. Lab preceptors should be grading students on a step by step basis having them rotate through steps and grading them on a step by step process. Students who have erroneous results in this phase should have to repeat the lab if values fluctuate past the accepted standard or at the discretion of the professor. Any score below threshold should result in remediation of the lab.

 

[Lucca]

That begs the question, what should be the competency expected of undergraduate students in laboratory courses? Baby steps. One develops the competencies and then develops the instruction and experiential learning so that students can meet the competencies.

Here's an article about how this is being done at three midwestern schools (Michigan, Wisconsin & Purdue). https://www.insidehighered.com/news...ation-arrives-three-major-public-institutions

Ideally this would end all cookbook laboratory classes which do nothing, in my humble opinion, but take time away from actually valuable experiences. We have lab classes here based on discovery and coming up with experiments (of course, using a set of tools traditionally taught in the cookbook course). It's impossible to sign up for them because they are so popular and it's not because they are the "easy A". Nothing is easier than just following instructions. They are popular because they are fun! Because science should be fun....

/rant

 

[Lucca]

One of the problems I find with current curricula is the forced tie in of laboratory courses to validate subject courses as being "actual hard science courses". Classes like analytical chemistry should be the de facto standard as the first course all students must take in order to get a solid basis in laboratory science with respect to techniques and methods. In addition, laboratory classes should occur more than once or twice a week. I believe that there should be three sections to any given laboratory class, the first one being a theory oriented class that forces students to propose the experiment and also present a lab notebook with the steps planned out along with considerations like: time, cost of reagents, and areas of error. If students aren't prepared for lab, they shouldn't be allowed to participate because they will be simply wasting the cost of reagents and upkeep for supplies.

The second section should be the first run for students. This run should involve preceptor involved review of the students as they perform this run and supervision. This is similar to the current model where students run the lab and write a paper. However, in lieu of a typical lab paper including verbatim background information from the textbook, students should focus on the analytical section where they seriously note all the mistakes that led to errors in the experiment.

The third section is the performance run where students receive no instruction and must perform the lab on themselves. Lab preceptors should be grading students on a step by step basis having them rotate through steps and grading them on a step by step process. Students who have erroneous results in this phase should have to repeat the lab if values fluctuate past the accepted standard or at the discretion of the professor. Any score below threshold should result in remediation of the lab.

Not to be rude, but sounds like a huge waste of everyone's time and resources. this is just a more strenuous version of what already exists and still focuses on the wrong things "doing stuff" rather than "learning to think on your own". Knowing the theory behind an experiment is very important, and so is understanding how to do the experiment, knowing its limitations, and how to understand the results...but at the end of the day experiments are just a means to an end, they are not the real thing we want people to learn about. Teach people how to identify an appropriate question and they will try to find the tools to solve it. Provide those tools and instruction on how to use them and people can figure out for themselves how to go about resolving a question.

 

[Lost in Translation]

I didn't imply that at all. You inferred that. I certainly didn't say that the professors wanted everyone to fail. You might want to read back through the thread a bit. 😵

Low averages don't actually mean anyone is being "challenged" other than being forced to work a lot harder. Low averages alone (or high averages) do not guarantee a course is actually focusing on teaching people how to think about a subject or use a set of tools to identify and solve appropriate problems or think critically about observations.

In the case of my school, that's exactly what the low averages meant. Please don't assume that your school was somehow exceptional and genuinely challenging with smarter students

Am I wrong in interpreting this as saying that a low average meant that you and your classmates were being more challenged and that my school wasn't filled with intelligent people?

And you should read back, too, because:

Maybe we were just smart(er)?

Was a hypothetical question directed at @MareNostrummm and you seem to have taken it as an attack against your intelligence because you followed:

If this was 3 years ago and the information was still fresh in my mind, if @MareNostrummm showed me one of his California orgo tests I could probably do very well on it. That's a function of my professor actually teaching me the material in a way I can understand and grasp.

with

Please don't assume that your school was somehow exceptional and genuinely challenging with smarter students, whereas other people's schools were just stupidly hard and mindless just for the sake of it. That's very condescending.

When I said nothing of the sort.

 

[Sardinia]

@Lucca Just curious what is the "real thing" people learn about at the end of a 4-year education.

 

[Sardinia]

Because whatever your response is, if it isn't linked to a prospective monetary return on their investment then it was not worth the time and money they sank into getting that degree.

 

[Cotterpin]

Am I wrong in interpreting this as saying that a low average meant that you and your classmates were being more challenged and that my school wasn't filled with intelligent people?

Yes, you are 100% wrong in interpreting it that way. I didn't say more challenged. I simply said that our difficult exams were challenging. I wasn't making comparisons between my school and others. Just stating the situation at my school. I can't say whether or not it was more challenging than other schools because I haven't been to other schools. And I never, ever, ever said or implied anything about the intelligence of the students at your school. Suggesting that someone else's school has students of lesser intelligence would be a total dick move. Speaking of which...

And you should read back, too, because:

Was a hypothetical question directed at @MareNostrummm and you seem to have taken it as an attack against your intelligence because you followed:


with


When I said nothing of the sort.

I responded that way because I felt that your "hypothetical question" was rude, arrogant, and condescending towards @MareNostrummm.

And I also have to admit that I accidentally conflated your comment with the comment made by Lucca which was also quoted in my response. But that changes nothing about my reaction to your crazy rude comment to MareNostrummm.

 

[Lucca]

@Lucca Just curious what is the "real" thing people learn about at the end of a 4-year education.

People can come out with all sorts of things or nothing. If you want to know what I think they should come out with it's this:

1. The ability to think for yourself.
2. The ability to think critically about the real world and make arguments based on evidence in order to draw conclusions about the world, come up with new questions, and carry out decisions.
3. The ability to understand and think critically about the arguments of others.
4. Develop some intuition about learning and in particular how you learn to ensure that you can continue to develop 1-3 without formal structures of education.

The end goal being the development of citizenship so you can participate productively and freely in society and help others do the same.

The way to do this is to build courses where people get to discover material, as opposed to simply covering it.

As far as I'm concerned, an education has nothing to do with making money afterwards. It ought to be accessible for everyone at no debt if it is to succeed in actually being a positive institution. Otherwise, it is just another instrument of oppression and exploitation.

In our current society, if a company wants a tool, they should be happy their tools can think and learn for themselves and just cough up the money to train them for the jobs they need them for. You know, the way it was not too long ago and continues to be in many, many countries.

Of the educational theorists I am familiar with, I agree most with Paulo Freire, if you are interested.

 

[Sardinia]

@Lucca Explains student loans as non-dischargeable loans, lack of federal subsidies for graduate programs, for-profit institutions, exponential increases in student tuition, institutions like Sallie May that charge obscene interest rates, and judges ruling caveat emptor when it comes to schools defrauding students.

An education is the cure of all that is exploitation within American capitalism and not symptomatic of an education bubble that has sodomized the concept of education in and of itself.

 

[Lucca]

@Lucca Explains student loans as non-dischargeable loans, lack of federal subsidies for graduate programs, for-profit institutions, exponential increases in student tuition, institutions like Sallie May that charge obscene interest rates, and judges ruling caveat emptor when it comes to schools defrauding students.

An education is the cure of all that is exploitation within American capitalism and not symptomatic of an education bubble that has sodomized the concept of education in and of itself.

I never said our educational system represents or even aspires to these ideals. As you say, quite the contrary. It doesn't mean all hope is lost. It just means the old adage "don't let your schooling get in the way of your education" is more true than ever

 

[Sardinia]

I never said our educational system represents or even aspires to these ideals. As you say, quite the contrary. It doesn't mean all hope is lost. It just means the old adage "don't let your schooling get in the way of your education" is more true than ever

You read all of that and you thought "schooling" was the factor that got in the way of an education. I love you man, but you're killing me.

 

[Lucca]

You read all of that and you thought "schooling" was the factor that got in the way of an education. I love you man, but you're killing me.

Do you want me to say "the government"? It's a complicated issue. The government is complicit or the original perpetrator of many actions which have led to the problems you listed. But it is one of many forces. I don't think this is the thread for that discussion though, if you want Pm me.

 

[redferrari]

Isn't that the truth... But at least the professor is doing you a favor for when you take the MCAT.

 

[Geo16]

I'm barely in Gen Chem 1 and this is scaring me.
I'll be taking Orgo at UCLA or USC (two schools most likely).
Currently CC course is going well, except I know that the difficulty notch will crank up at least 4-5 times.

PS/ Did Lost in Translation got his account on hold from this thread?
Was it because of Alexandra Wallace video? Whoa.

 

[efle]

My ochem class had exams with averages in the 30s and 40s and high scores in the 70s. There isn't a university out there with smart(er) enough students to explain it away like that @Lost in Translation (same is true of Cotterpins college if I correctly recall which hers was). If they want to, it's easy to make a test with a massive amount of many, many step problems to be done in a short period, and bring even the 40+ MCAT, top of their class types to their knees!

And that's the way it should be for that kind of class imo. The only way to spot the kids that can nearly double their average peers' performance is by making that average very low.

 

[efle]

PS/ Did Lost in Translation got his account on hold from this thread?
Was it because of Alexandra Wallace video? Whoa.

I'm gonna guess yes, since I haven't seen anything else that would merit even a temp ban or probation out of him. If so, maybe a bit of an over reaction from the mods, since I think the entire point of posting it was that the behavior was embarrassing and stupid.

 

[Cotterpin]

If it was for the video, then wouldn't the mods have taken it down?

 

[Lawpy]

Ouch @Lost in Translation got smacked with the banhammer. That's unfortunate.

This also means @Lost In Transcription wins the LiT cup by default. Congrats!

 

[efle]

If it was for the video, then wouldn't the mods have taken it down?

I don't believe they remove people's rude posts when they temp ban them, do they? I know posts I made way back when that got me probation were left up. They're good about no censorship, only removal of outright terms violating threads and spam.

 

[Lawpy]

If it was for the video, then wouldn't the mods have taken it down?

I don't believe they remove people's rude posts when they temp ban them, do they? I know posts I made way back when that got me probation were left up. They're good about no censorship, only removal of outright terms violating threads and spam.

I actually thought it was thread derailment and general rudeness. But I have no idea.

 

[efle]

Derailment usually gets a thread lock and there is usually warning/probation before for rudeness. But no point speculating.

 

[7331poas]

The profs are who I'm laughing at! Sorry if that came across rudely. Princeton was famously the bastion against Ivy inflation with a policy capping A's at ~1/3rd of grades (they recently did away with this policy, too). Avg Ivy GPAs are in the mid 3.xs now, some of the worse offenders up to an A- average. Whatever prof(s) told you there was a secret school policy capping As to 5% are apparently in an extremely tiny minority that got the memo

Anyone think this is insanely high? even at princeton. GPAs at my school are probably in the 2.x

 

[efle]

Anyone think this is insanely high? even at princeton. GPAs at my school are probably in the 2.x

I guess it depends what the goal is. Giving lots of As makes sense if your students tend to score in the top 10% on the MCAT and you want them to do appropriately well in the medical admissions game. Doesn't make sense if you're trying to use grades like originally intended where a B is above average and an A means something special. Until admissions start to be forgiving of Bs at schools like Princeton they're going to be doing the former rather than latter.

 

[Gurby]

I never said my school was more challenging than yours. I did imply that the student body at my school might be more talented.

But that's all a function of the student. There were some really smart people and some really dumb people. I'm sure that's the case at your school as well.

A little bit of post history snooping reveals that Ms. Chiponhershoulder scored a 31 on the old MCAT (83 percentile). So much for that theory about being smarter than everyone else. But hey, she got an A in organic chemistry!

 

[Lawpy]

A little bit of post history snooping reveals that Ms. Chiponhershoulder scored a 31 on the old MCAT (83 percentile). So much for that theory about her being smarter than everyone else. But hey, she got an A in organic chemistry!

Well it shows she's smarter than 83% of test takers !

 

[aldol16]

I only teach grad students (and med students). No one fails grad students. Med students rarely fail an exam and if they do, they get one or two chances for a "do over" before being required to repeat the year.

Tell that to CalTech which routinely flunks out 40% of its class after generals.

 

[aldol16]

The profs are who I'm laughing at! Sorry if that came across rudely. Princeton was famously the bastion against Ivy inflation with a policy capping A's at ~1/3rd of grades (they recently did away with this policy, too). Avg Ivy GPAs are in the mid 3.xs now, some of the worse offenders up to an A- average. Whatever prof(s) told you there was a secret school policy capping As to 5% are apparently in an extremely tiny minority that got the memo

Anyone think this is insanely high? even at princeton. GPAs at my school are probably in the 2.x

I guess it depends what the goal is. Giving lots of As makes sense if your students tend to score in the top 10% on the MCAT and you want them to do appropriately well in the medical admissions game. Doesn't make sense if you're trying to use grades like originally intended where a B is above average and an A means something special. Until admissions start to be forgiving of Bs at schools like Princeton they're going to be doing the former rather than latter.

The problem this issue revolves around here, as has been debated time and again, is what "average" means and what it should mean. A model where "B" is"average for the institution you are at" makes sense only if graduate/law/medical schools and hiring managers understand and take into account that "average at MIT" does not mean "average at University of [insert state here]." Now please note that I am not referring to the better state schools like Michigan or Berkeley or UVA. Once people start taking that into account numerically (very hard to do) in admissions/hiring decisions, then the model is validated.

On the other hand, one could have a model where top schools with a high proportion of talented students try to estimate how their students stack up relative to the general student pool in United States. This would be a ranking on an absolute scale rather than a relative scale. So in this model, one would expect to see more As at top schools than at other institutions.

The problem now is that we're somewhere in between these two models and nobody knows what "average" is. Is a B at MIT indicative of being average at MIT but above average relative to students from state schools? Does an A at MIT make one a genius? Or is an A at a state school equivalent to an A at MIT? These are the tough questions that nobody has a good answer to and these questions arise from the ****ed up grading scale schools use. But we don't really have a better system in place, so it is what it is.

 

[efle]

The problem now is that we're somewhere in between these two models and nobody knows what "average" is. Is a B at MIT indicative of being average at MIT but above average relative to students from state schools? Does an A at MIT make one a genius? Or is an A at a state school equivalent to an A at MIT? These are the tough questions that nobody has a good answer to and these questions arise from the ****ed up grading scale schools use. But we don't really have a better system in place, so it is what it is.

If only there was some standardized, normally distributed exam on the same material as classes that everyone had to take that could be used to make comparisons

 

[LizzyM]

If only there was some standardized, normally distributed exam on the same material as classes that everyone had to take that could be used to make comparisons

Sadly, that tells us how well you are able to prepare for a high stakes exam. It doesn't tell us how well you do with day to day responsibilities for assignments, being on-time with reports, participating in group/team assignments, speaking up in class discussions, writing and speaking well. We do have LORs for that but it can also be reflected in grades.

 

[efle]

Sadly, that tells us how well you are able to prepare for a high stakes exam.

Yet many get fully prepared and fall far short of the highly competitive scores. It measures ability as well as prep!

It doesn't tell us how well you do with day to day responsibilities for assignments, being on-time with reports, participating in group/team assignments, speaking up in class discussions, writing and speaking well.

I suppose I was thinking mostly of sGPA, which at least in my experience was giant lecture halls with optional attendance and a grade built off 3-4 difficult exams that again rewarded differences in ability and not just prep.

I dunno, to me seeing low sGPA/solid MCAT combos pouring out of tough undergrads is a result of the competition there, not that the schools attract a lot of irresponsible students that can prep well for high-pressure test.