The percentage of Princeton grades in the A range dipped below 40 percent last year, down from nearly 50 percent when the policy was adopted in 2004. The class of 2009 had a mean grade-point average of 3.39, compared with 3.46 for the class of 2003. In a survey last year by the undergraduate student government, 32 percent of students cited the grading policy as the top source of unhappiness (compared with 25 percent for lack of sleep).Grade deflation is one of those things which sounds good in theory until it starts happening to you.
At Cornell, grading depends a lot on the type of class you take. I can remember only one time when I was the victim of grade deflation. It was a history class; our grade was primarily based on two pre-lim exams and a final. The tests were graded as points/100, which was converted on the standard scale (i.e. 88%=B+). I did well on the second pre-lim, but apparently the rest of the my section did as well. So even though I received around 90% credit on the test, I was told that the professor had lowered all of our grades. My 90% counted as a B-, which dropped my final grade to a B+.
I realize that professors, from time to time, make an effort to curb grade inflation in their particular classes. But many Cornell professors seem happy to reward hard work with an A. If you have 15 people in a seminar, and everyone works hard and has a genuine interest in the material, why not give everyone A's?
The Princeton article talks about job competitiveness, and the same thing could be said for graduate school. People looking at our transcripts aren't always going to know that it was easier for me to earn an A than it was for my competition from Princeton.
Of course, publishing median grades on transcripts was supposed to negate this issue. That A- doesn't look so good when the median grade is an A.
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