poor grades?

Adam \'04 · February 12, 2003, 01:58:14 PM

I cannot refute the statistics. I find it hard to believe that only 8% of Cornell graduates have honors ( http://www.boston.com/globe/metro/packages/harvard_honors/part2.htm ), while 40 % of the grades issued are A's, and a full 24% of applicants to law school form Cornell to Cornell have GPA's less than a 3.0. Of these people you think, [Q] Obviously GPA's for law school applicants will be higher, on average, than other students.
[/Q] You are implying that more than 24% of the Cornell population has below a 3.0. You are contradicting your argument assuming you are assuming a normal overall distribution.

gwm3 · February 12, 2003, 02:10:53 PM

Well, first of all you have to recognize how honors are awarded at Cornell. You can have a 4.1 and not graduate with honors if you choose not to write a thesis.

Second, I see no contradiction there. Looking at a GPA alone cannot tell you the breakdown of a person's grades. A 3.0 can be 4 B's. It can also be an A, 2 B's, and a C. It can be Two A's and two C's. So, knowing where people fall relative to the 3.0 lines doesn't tell me how many C's they've got. You can actually have a GPA below 3.0 and never get a C (striaight B minuses = 2.7 for example). So I would argue that is very possible for more than 25% to fall below 3.0 and still have, numerically, more A's than C's, D's, and F's awarded

jeh25 · February 12, 2003, 04:05:14 PM

YGraham Meli '02 wrote:

QuoteWell, first of all you have to recognize how honors are awarded at Cornell. You can have a 4.1 and not graduate with honors if you choose not to write a thesis.

Yes, and if you have a 4.0 you graduate "with distinction". Because the globe was interested in magna, summa, etc, I assume the journalist did a halfway competent job and reported the comparable statistic, regardless of name. Put another way, I'm assuming the reporter isn't an idiot and that the 8% represents the number of people at Cornell that graduate with distinction, not the percentage of people that turned in honors theses.

Adam \'04 · February 12, 2003, 04:27:23 PM

Okay dude. Chill. I realize that there are more A's given than C's, D's, and F's. I have been ball busting. Just to let everyone know. I did a bit of analysis on my own. Of the 326 classes I looked at on the spring 2001 median grade report(1st 6 pages), there were 165 classes with A's(50.6%), 158 with B's(48.5%), and 3 with C's(0.9%). Number of grades given: A+'s=8, A's=1510, A-'s=4338, B+'s=6382, B's=6069, B-'s=1683, C+'s=26, C's=59. Average number of students/class: A+'s=8, A's=28.5, A-'s=39.4, B+'s=61.4, B's=131.9, B-'s=210.4, C+'s=26, C's=29. Percentage of total grades given: A+'s=0.0004%, A's=7.5%, A-'s=21.6, B+'s=31.8%, B's=30.2%, B-'s=8.4%, C+'s=0.13%, C's=0.3%. Total percentage of grades given: A's=29.1312%, B's=70.4060%, and C's=0.4234%. The average median grade was 3.2934, and the median grade of the median grades was a B+(3.30). This isn't totally accurate by any means, but it should be pretty close overall. The funny thing is, if you look at the classes by median grade you come up with 50.6% A's, but if you look at percentage bases on total grades given it significantly falls to 29.1312% A's. ::nut:: ::help::

marty · February 12, 2003, 05:34:30 PM

That is hard to believe Adam. 10 for 10??

I was a Chem E and I remember the chemistry department had a program for normalizing the distribution of the grades before applying the A's etc. They took standard deviation into account (unlike the Math department, Prof. Rand) and my recollection was that many of the Chem courses had the curve centered between B+ and A-. I graduated in '74 as my name here implies.

I thought that this was a fair compromise at the time. That is a compromise between old fashioned grading where C's were average and taking account the general abilities and work ethic of the students in question.

So I can't believe that there are 10 F's for every 10 A's in these days of somewhat inflated grades.

gwm3 · February 12, 2003, 06:02:22 PM

Don't worry, Adam. I am perfectly "chill." I just enjoy arguing about things that aren't that important :-P And thanks for the thorough statistical analysis. I actually thought there would be considerably more C's than that (half a percent -- wow).

John, I don't think the 8% honors stat could include distinction. Distinction (at least in Arts) goes to the top 30% of the class.

JordanCS · February 12, 2003, 07:07:40 PM

Well, in most of my EE courses, the grades were normalized around a B-. Therefore, roughly 12 percent of the class got As. Unfortunately, I didn't get up there very often.

I'm one of those people who don't exist, with my *ahem* 2.85 GPA. Oh well...I have the degree...and I did make Deans list in the fall of my Junior year!

Jman

DeltaOne81 · February 12, 2003, 07:51:38 PM

Just to add a piece of info to the mix, honors at Cornell is determined by each department (or maybe school if the departments are lazy). In ECE it's a a Junior Year Honors Seminary, Senior Year Honors Project, one one more Advanced ECE Elective (400 or higher) while maintaining a GPA around 3.5 or something. CS was pretty much the same when I checked out of curiousity a week or so ago.

gwm3 · February 12, 2003, 08:10:49 PM

I never said you don't exist... I suppose I should have qualified my statement by saying that I only actually met 3 people in the 4 years I was at Cornell :-P

tml5 · February 12, 2003, 08:14:50 PM

[Q]Just to add a piece of info to the mix, honors at Cornell is determined by each department (or maybe school if the departments are lazy). In ECE it's a a Junior Year Honors Seminary, [/Q]

Is it just me, or do the vows required at most seminaries seem unduly harsh for an honors program? ::nut::

Sorry, couldn't resist, even though I'm sure it's just a typo.

DeltaOne81 · February 12, 2003, 08:41:23 PM

Heh... SEMINAR!!

Hey, I'm tired and gotta get up at 4 am tomorrow for a trip outta town this weekend (no, not to New England - yes, that means I won't be hearing the games live ::twitch::

), but you better believe I'll be checking up regularly).

Geez, first JTW with his "peak vs. peek", now this... I just can't catch a break

So to you all I bit a hardy...

:-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P :-P

jtwcornell91 · February 12, 2003, 08:46:51 PM

A couple of additional data points: circa 1988 the "standard" intro Physics sequence (112-213-214), which most Engineers and some Physics majors take, was curved to a B-, while the "honors" series (116-217-218), taken by most Physics majors (especially those coming in with AP math) was curved to a B+. The idea was to prevent people from taking the "easier" class to get a better grade; the shifting of curves was supposed to represent a single scale on which a given student would get a comparable grade in either course.

Also, circa 1991 Astronomy and I'm pretty sure Physics did not require a thesis to get honors; it was based on grades in the major courses. I thought that was kind of a shame in retrospect, since most of my colleagues in grad school had written senior theses.

jnachod · February 12, 2003, 10:03:37 PM

On google one day I found fairly recent (1996) statistics about the average GPA's for all of Cornell's undergraduate colleges and a sampling of the departments. Contrary to what many people think, the hotel school has the lowest gpa! I'm curious to find out what the biology gpa is, my guess would be somewhere in the high 2's.

Undergraduate GPA for Colleges
& Selected Departments


Colleges
Human Ecology 3.28
ILR 3.28
Arts & Sciences 3.15
AAP 3.14
ALS 3.12
Engineering 3.10
Hotel 3.07

.


Departments
Landscape Arch 3.54
Chinese 3.54
Rural Sociology 3.51
Classics 3.45
Textiles & Apparel 3.37
Education 3.33
Material Science 3.26
History 3.18
Computer Science 3.17
Art History 3.16
ARME 3.03
Economics 2.94
Chemistry 2.91
Mathematics 2.88
Physics 2.86

Source: http://web.cornell.edu/UniversityFaculty/FacSen/approved_minutes/Figure1.pdf

There is also an interesting discussion about Cornell grading, how they choose what to curve to, etc. on the page

http://web.cornell.edu/UniversityFaculty/FacSen/approved_minutes/960313.Minutes.html

Lowell '99 · February 12, 2003, 10:36:51 PM

What, no music majors? I guess my graduating class of 5 wasn't statistically significant...

marty · February 12, 2003, 11:59:04 PM

The more I think about this the less I am convinced that B+ A- was the center of the curve in the intro science courses. So I'm loosing my mind. If so, the center of the curve was likely C+ B-.

The fact that I can't remember of course is another argument for just how little all this stuff matters. And when I can't remember this, I feel old.

poor grades?

Adam \'04

Adam \'04