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Re: Concerned about grades (longish)



Keeping in mind I haven't been a careful reader of this thread, no one has mentioned that admission officials rate colleges' stds. by the success of their transfers. for example the secty. of the sci
dept. (back in the 50's) told me that Annapolis was not a very good school as their transfers' grades dropped at UC. This, IMAO, is a rather good method of standardizing the grades of ednl.
institutions. Unfortunately, often n = rather low for good statl. sig. and will not detect absolute grade inflation, just relative ranking.

bc

P.s. Also HS's by reputation gain admission of their students. especially from private schools to private U's. The college advisor at my school told me that their recommendations to MIT, Cal Tech,
Harvard, Stanford, etc. had never been turned down -- though this school has changed much (many more foreign students, five times larger grad. class, and co-ed!) I doubt that that this has changed.
Then the top two or three (of a class of 8) got a full scholarship anywhere in the US.

Doug Craigen wrote:

Joel Rauber wrote:
My modest proposal, which I can not implement is the following.

Grade transcripts should indicate a GPA and a four year moving average for
the discipline, and how many standard deviations the GPA is from that
average.

E.g. Joe Blow physics major transcript might read

GPA = 3.4, and the average of all graduating physics majors for the last
four years was 3.2 making Joe Blow 0.1 standard deviations above the mean
for said physics majors.

Whereas, John Doe, an underwater soap carving major, may have a transcript
that reads

GPA = 3.95, with the average for all underwater soap carving majors being
3.91, making John Doe .01 standard deviations above the average for
underwater soap carving majors.

We could argue about how to best express it, but this sort of detail is
what somebody (most likely a potential employer) actually looking at a
transcript wants to know. Anybody looking at a physics major's
transcript knows that their knowledge of physics is far above that of
the typical english major, so it is moot to worry about making the
grading scale express that fact. What a potential employer cares about
is how this person stacks up against other physics majors. But if you
don't know whether a typical physics major averages a C or a B+, how do
you know what to think of one with a B average?

\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\_/^\

Doug Craigen
http://www.dctech.com/physics/about_dc.html