Exam and University Disparity

I go to a private university and I have experienced very little curving at all. I have never had a curve that actually LOWERED my grade, but I did have one professor who had one that gave more points to persons with lower scores. Other than that I've had a couple of flat curves where everybody gets the same amount of points added onto their test score. But in my experience 95% of my exams/classes had no curve at all

Why is American education all so fucking weird?
Why is it hard to just award them a grade based on what score they got?

Depends on the course and the prof and the number of students and the distribution of marks between assessments.

>>8649831
It's probably because private institutions have reasonable professors. Do you really feel like a professor is doing a good time teaching students when a 50%=A?

Stuff like this is almost exclusively in STEM classes.

>>8649842
Their a bunch of spoiled brats. American education is a joke that's easier than your mother. That's why they curve and give extra credit, so babies don't start crying.
Ever wonder why all stundents need to take this bullshit IQ test called SAT? Because school is so fucking easy, everybody gets A+, so they need a way to separate the smart students from all the rest.

>>8649798
Well, in my experience the average in large STEM classes is around 50%. So scoring 18 points above isn't particularly impressive. It's certainly bullshit that your were in the top 15 people in your class and got a B unless the remaining scores significantly higher than you did.

>>8649856
It's mainly because in large classes the majority of the people are 100% retarded. As I alluded to in my last post the average tends to be close to a 50%.

I agree with OP, but wonder how universities in other countries function as well.

There are courses during undergrad in American universities that subject students to be graded on participation. A student whom mastered the material, received 100% in all fields but fails to show up to class that has 10% of their grade as "Participation" would score the same as the student whom scored at an 80% level but attended all classes.

The same with curves, but students are usually rewarded points on a conventional curve basing the test scores of the highest grade. The curves that curve the data to partition 5% of individuals as A's, 20% as B'c, 40% as C's (and so forth) is questionable.

/Sci/ probably has a larger proportion of people whom logically reason. It makes sense that there are right and wrong answers, grades should be based on the exams and homework.

The counter-argument deals with the un-measurable, where professors factor in effort, or apply statistical principles of how students ought to be graded instead of how students should be graded. This method can have several answers, as several professors can evaluate one student's grade with these principles and have disparities of outcome when they assign a letter grade.

So I agree, our system is far from perfect

>>8649862
>Well, in my experience the average in large STEM classes is around 50%.
The average was around a 60.

>So scoring 18 points above isn't particularly impressive.
I wasn't trying to brag. This is just a really shitty start to my semester. The Prof even told us that he curved it "this time" to help the average.

>unless the remaining scores significantly higher than you did.
>it's mainly because in large classes the majority of the people are 100% retarded
I thought the retarded students would get weeded out? It's not an introductory class and it isn't required unless you're majoring.

I attend an Ivy with (((inflation))), but we're given significant curves because the professors give us tests with the expectation that you won't even have time to finish them.

For reference, our course on computational complexity has an average of about 40% on all tests, 60% on homeworks.

>>8649932
>For reference, our course on computational complexity has an average of about 40% on all tests, 60% on homeworks.

You do realise that those grades are exceptionally *high* for a proper complexity course, right? Meaning it's probably a joke of a course.

>>8649798
>18 points above the average
What's the standard deviation?

>>8649932
>For reference, our course on computational complexity has an average of about 40% on all tests, 60% on homeworks.

That's not very remarkable. Most schools have courses like this.

>>8649948

It's actually a pretty famous school. Our faculty (especially the ones who teach complexity) is composed of many of the current famous people in the field.

>>8649888
No, the super retards get weeded out at the 100-200 level by the trivial classes like say programming I-II or calculus I-II or the equivalent. Then you have the next level of retards who were smart enough to not die at fetus level. Low 300 level classes still have quite the fair share of retards let me tell you what.

Once you're in pure theory classes that aren't super low level like say NLP or a class which requires many other math classes as a soft prerequisite, then you will most likely be with the strongest who are actually ready to learn.