The EPIC WIN Thread 3: SON OF EPIC

ElJuski

Staff member
Grades in college are pretty inessential (besides having a good line on your resume). Never understood how people could get anything less than a B in a college course, unless that college course was EXTREMELY difficult or not in your wheelhouse. I feel like most bad grades at the undergrad level is just laziness and poor time management.
 

fade

Staff member
Grades in college are pretty inessential (besides having a good line on your resume). Never understood how people could get anything less than a B in a college course, unless that college course was EXTREMELY difficult or not in your wheelhouse. I feel like most bad grades at the undergrad level is just laziness and poor time management.
I would say that grades are inconsequential in grad school classes. You're more or less expecting students to make an A, so that a B is basically a warning, and a C is failing (seriously--it doesn't count on your degree plan at most places).
 
I would say that grades are inconsequential in grad school classes. You're more or less expecting students to make an A, so that a B is basically a warning, and a C is failing (seriously--it doesn't count on your degree plan at most places).
I always found this odd. Why not just make every class pass/fail and save the trouble?
 
Because then there would be no way to separate the people with drive from the people who just "get by." And that would slow down the interview process.

--Patrick
 
Because then there would be no way to separate the people with drive from the people who just "get by." And that would slow down the interview process.

--Patrick
But at the grad school level it seems as if there's only two ratings. You either pass with an A or B (widely considered good grades), or you fail. There is no room for "average." So why bother keeping the same grading scale which is intended to show multiple ratings?
 
Ah. Didn't realize you were talking about grad school. I suppose then it's so you can get better scholarships for Ultraschool.

--Patrick
 

figmentPez

Staff member
A grade gives you a fine grained tool which may allow you to make better choices, whereas a pas/fail wouldn't be that helpful.
You have a flawed assumption here. The final pass/fail grade for the class is not the only feedback the student gets, it's merely the only result that goes on the student's record.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
I'm curious what the reasoning is to get rid of it though. Is there a need to get rid of it? Does it harm graduate students?
I think the harm is that it leaves less room for students to excel. If an A is expected, then what is above and beyond expected? You mentioned the problem if students get no feedback that they're edging closer to failure, well I see an equal problem when students aren't allowed to see when they have exceeded expectations. When letter grades are handed out, there is often less feedback beyond those grades than when it's pass/fail. So with letter grades, students in danger of failing know when they're dropping behind, but students who are excelling often have little to gauge how much beyond basic competency they actually are.
 

fade

Staff member
I disagree, having taught quite a few graduate classes. The classes are small and intimate. The feedback comes quite often, if at the very least in the form of extremely detailed comments on homeworks, writing exercises, and exams. I'd most certainly say that the grad students get much better feedback than most of my undergrads do. Also, just because an A is expected doesn't mean it's guaranteed. I gave out tons of Bs and more than enough Cs. C isn't the bottom either. I've given at least one F in a grad class. Also getting an A on your record doesn't mean you got 90-100%. I still grade for correctness and still give a percentage. But it might turn out that I give 70-100% an A at the end (it's happened for some really math-heavy classes).

You already proved you were a good student by passing grad school admission. The average should be good. Grades do become almost a formality. Besides, you really prove you're above and beyond on your thesis. At least in the sciences, a master's is your chance to show you can do independent research, and that's what the employers are looking for. With a Ph.D. you're proving you can innovate and do original research, so same deal.
 

figmentPez

Staff member
I disagree, having taught quite a few graduate classes.
Well, I'm glad to hear that, but when the same grading structure trickles down the chain all the way to high school (or even just basic college courses), and it most certainly did in the high schools I attended and had friends at, and A is expected of all students, and a C is as bad as failure (but passes anyway), and there is no small and intimate feedback, the whole thing is royally messed up.

EDIT: Sorry, I'm really pulling stuff out of my ass on this one. My school experience has been a lot different than most people, and I certainly haven't done any high-level college work, so I can't speak to that. I'm in a bad mood today and I'm arguing out of emotion and not really logic. I'll let it drop and acknowledge that it's a lot more complicated a subject than I'm letting it be, and that having A grades expected may not be the bad thing for graduate work that is has been in every other level of school where I've been pissed that A grades are the standard when they shouldn't be.
 
I take no small delight in reinforcing the actual meaning of grades in my class. C is average, and only the truly excellent students will get A's. It pisses off some parents, but I'm not going to back down. I'm fair and consistent, so they have no real grounds to complain. And I'll flunk a kid too if I think he/she deserves it. Way too many teachers around here just follow "social passing" as a rule.
 

Dave

Staff member
This may splinter off into the political forum. The reason most teachers have pressure passing students when they don't deserve it? Money. The better the test scores are - whether really earned or inflated - the ore funding a school can get.

No child left behind means all children are left behind. (By the way, this is not an anti-Bush rant. It's been happening for a while with Republicans and Democrats...)
 

fade

Staff member
I always joke that if we're looking for bipartisan cooperation, NCLB is where it's at. No one likes it.
Added at: 22:17
Also, no argument from me on grade inflation. I was strictly speaking grad school. Undergrad should be a C-averaged. BUT, we have been told by the admin that we are to be lenient with the big freshman lecture hall classes.
 
Lenient with big freshman lecture hall classes? Man, we always considered those to be weed-out courses (from a student's perspective). Especially math or science lecture classes, when we'd have 400+ students in an auditorium trying to learn math from a prof with a horribly difficult to understand accent. Of course... that may not have been the ideal lesson to take away from Math 102, "If you can't understand this professor, switch majors." May not have been what the university was going for.
 
I always joke that if we're looking for bipartisan cooperation, NCLB is where it's at. No one likes it.
Added at: 22:17
Also, no argument from me on grade inflation. I was strictly speaking grad school. Undergrad should be a C-averaged. BUT, we have been told by the admin that we are to be lenient with the big freshman lecture hall classes.
As long as it's not one of those situations where you curve down to hit that C-average. I've seen that before. Same line of thought processing that passes everyone, but running in reverse.
 

fade

Staff member
I can safely (and maybe sadly) say that I've never been in the situation where grades were too high.
 
I went to school in Canada. I've never had a letter grade, either at my high school or at the couple of years I spent at the UofA. We had our 4.0 style average and we got percentages in our classes.

And considering how almost no one in this thread agrees to what the letters even mean, I'm glad.
 
Just got my first feedback from my new corporate editing gig. It was overwhelmingly positive. Fan-freaking-tastic. Makes my day.
 

ElJuski

Staff member
AV Club Undercover 2012 picked one of my write-in songs for the second year in a row. THIS MEANS I AM A MUSIC GOD
 

fade

Staff member
They were cleaning up the library at work, and my boss says, "Jack, come in here." I'm thinking, oh great, time to pack the desk. Instead he hands me a nicely bound copy of my thesis and says, "Hey this was in the library, and I thought you might want it." That's cool. It definitely predates my employment, which means they were using my thesis as a reference. I already kind of knew that, because one of the new employees was studying it (online copy) when I interviewed here, so this is doubly cool. I also couldn't afford a bound copy of my own thesis back when I finished my doctorate, and I never got around to it since, so that works out nicely.
 
"To the Colonel, and early morning street sweepers..."

That has to be one of the more interesting dedications I've ever seen.
 
Today was the first shoot day of the feature film I've been working on since January. I've only been in LA for six months and I'm the location manager on an independent film starring Danny Glover. It's insane. Today went long, but otherwise smoothly and I didn't have any major catastrophes to deal with. And I get to do it all over again tomorrow.
 
Top