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The average GPA at Stanford is an A-, could not find information on median, but you would have to assume median is higher since GPA is not normally distributed at these institutions. And the average has probobably gone up in the decade since they stopped publishing GPA information. They actually made it even more difficult for professors to flunk students. Although that is better than the mid-90s when flunking was essentially not allowed. Stanford
I spent a couple of years as a research assistant at Stanford for a former University of Chicago prof. The professor offered me a job to drop out of school at Chicago and be her research assistant because the Stanford undergrads were not willing to put in the work. Same prof got reprimanded for wanting to flunk upper division students who did not show up for class or turn in any work; she applied for permission to flunk them and was denied and forced to give them all Ws instead.
I wonder if it has something to do with major.
I took a sociology class in college. The materials were easy and anyone who really studied could get an A. Some students still failed because they did not care at all.
However I majored in engineering and a few courses were really challenging for me. I could not understand everything at that time, and my grades showed that. At the same time, some students did very well and scored perfectly. In other words, I tried but I still could not do well.
The average GPA at Stanford is an A-, could not find information on median, but you would have to assume median is higher since GPA is not normally distributed at these institutions. And the average has probobably gone up in the decade since they stopped publishing GPA information. They actually made it even more difficult for professors to flunk students. Although that is better than the mid-90s when flunking was essentially not allowed. Stanford
I spent a couple of years as a research assistant at Stanford for a former University of Chicago prof. The professor offered me a job to drop out of school at Chicago and be her research assistant because the Stanford undergrads were not willing to put in the work. Same prof got reprimanded for wanting to flunk upper division students who did not show up for class or turn in any work; she applied for permission to flunk them and was denied and forced to give them all Ws instead.
I was a TA and most of my students got a C. The supervisor asked me to make more As and Bs.
After hearing about what one Harvard professor does on NPR, I'm going to assume it's grade inflation.
Quote:
YOUNG: Well, and professor, you told the Boston Globe that you now have a system where you...
MANSFIELD: Yeah, the thing it's just for me. What I've been doing for some years now is to give every student two grades. One is a private grade from me or from our graders as to how well they really did, and that's giving them information, which is useful to them, how good they are really, it really is compared to the others.
And the other official grade is the one I hand in to the registrar, which is based on the Harvard average. And the purpose of that is so I won't be punishing my own students.
YOUNG: Yeah because all the other students will be getting other grades.
MANSFIELD: That's right. But still at the same time they get the information. Right now you don't know what you're really good at, and that's because you can get an A in a course that, you know, may not really be your specialty or something that you should develop.
So students, they aren't told the truth. They're flattered.
GPA is not too important with the exception of being a qualifier for admission.
Consider that grades only reflect classroom-related work and only 20% of the learning at the college level comes out of classroom-related work.
When you apply for graduate/professional schools, GPA is very important though.
I suppose many Harvard graduates will apply for graduate/professional schools.
the thing is, if you're at harvard, you're smart enough to get an a.
so why punish people for going to harvard?
you can't have someone graduate with a 2.5 when anywhere else they'd be a 4.0 student.
but, all this proves is that the grading system is pretty flawed...
There are 1000's of kids that can "get into" Harvard that do not. Many of those kids find that they do not do well in college and most certainly are not 4.0 students. Grade inflation at the top schools is a very well known problem. Some kids also just don't put in the same effort as others, even at Harvard. Also factor in that some kids come from less challenging high schools and even though they were "top" students there, doesn't mean they would have been a top student at another high school. There are just too many variables to say that they should get a 4.0 just because they went to Harvard--or assume they would get a 4.0 elsewhere.
SuperSparkle, if a test is so difficult as to render an 'A' for 26% and a 'C-' for 8%, it is a useless test. If the goal is to learn marketable skills, rewarding failure is not the wisest avenue. Testing on a basis of rewarding utter failure with the highest letter grade would only transcend on the corporate executive level. Alas, the rest of us have to prove our worth daily and have a firm grasp on much more than 26% of what is presented to us. If a test is so difficult, it is clearly being misapplied or the students are simply not yet qualified to take it.
Perhaps you missed my point, or I did not explain it clearly enough. Getting a good education (in many fields) is not just simple memorization, where someone can learn a list of facts, study for an hour, play 'World of Warcraft' for two hours before a test, and get all A's.... What skills does that teach a student? Having difficult tests (at least for those who are motivated) teaches students to try harder the next time. Life is not just handed to a person (where some groups think it should be). You have to earn it. If you ever did a rapid-paced high-tech startup, would realize that it takes a great deal of work and effort, and many of them fail. These difficult tests provided a means to think out of the box, take the basic information students were given in their classwork, and apply it in new ways. It's called 'creativeness, innovation and insight'. That learning experience continues to grow and strengthen long after college.
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