I have a professor teaching a 3rd year course who has decided that grading interfers with education and so he will being giving all every student in every course he teaches an ‘A’. I am thinking it might be smart to drop this course because an undeserved ‘A’ may jepordize grad school options, especially considering he is notorious for getting lots of national & international media attention over various protests and activist-background.
So is it possible that staying in a course at a major university where 100+ kids are getting As for doing nothing might mess up my GPA or grad school options?
Depends. When I was at IU they developed a report card system where your transcript gave your grade AND the grades breakdown of the whole class. . . so if you got a B+ but everyone else got an A- everyone could tell. Or if you got a C+ and that was the highest grade in the class. . . So we grad students would sit around theorizing about who the one person in the seminar was who got a C- and why. . . But the grad school admissions will likely take into account ALL your grades. I don’t think this is a crisis. Letters of recommendation will be important. . .
It doesn’t affect graduate school except that these As artificially inflate your GPA.
However, if these are the only As you got when you are an otherwise B and C student, the grad school is going to want to know why, especially if your GRE is more in line with being a B and C student. But that speaks to grade inflation.
I’ve often thought of doing this, for much the same reason as your professor. As I caution my students, when discussing this grading system, in a context where this is common (which we’re approaching), the bachelor’s degree will become a simple commodity of time (i.e. registering for a certain number of courses over a certain number of years) and money (for tuition). What the grad schools will be even more interested in than they are now, at that point, will be letters of recommendation: which are by their nature private appraisals of your ability. (“Private” meaning they are a communication between the prof and the grad school that you never get to see.)
In other words, whenever grade inflation gets so extreme that a good student’s GPA becomes undistinguishable from a mediocre student’s GPA, the real difference is that profs will write glowing letters of recommendation for the good student (who worked his tail off where he didn’t have to) and destructive letters for the mediocre one (“I don’t really know Annie Stoodint, and am unfamiliar with her work, though she did register for my course in Brain Surgery for Epileptics…”) Someone on the cusp will have to be very self-aware in requesting letters of recommendation, since a bad one can and will keep you from graduate study. To me, it’s just substituting one kind of insecurity for another, over which you have far less control.
Until that day, though you’re fine on a individual basis. I can’t imagine the one prof’s reputation will be known to the grad school in any way.
pseudotriton, there is such a thing as reference inflation. I don’t know what the actual name is, but it’s basically a misleading reference that disguises incompetence behind noncommittal, vague or just flat misleading language.
Some profs will give negative references, but some, not wanting to hurt the student, rely on that sort of neutral language.
From my experience, a professor may give what seems like a positive reference to the student, but other faculty members are very good at reading between the lines. It is more a matter of what is/isn’t left out of the reference letter than what is actually said in it. You also have to be aware of where the reference letter came from and account for it. If it is from a professor in the UK for example, then tend to be much less nicey nice.
Professors usually know what a student is all about very quickly.
I doubt this A will hurt you. At the very worst, let’s say your professor is making headlines all semester for his new policy, the grad school might disregard that A and look at your GPA without it. The one situation where I might be concerned is if this is a course that is a specific prerequisite for the major you are going to grad school for. Then the grad school might be a little more interested in having some evidence that you really mastered the material. A GRE subject test might do the trick for that.
to answer your question, it will not jeopardize your entry in any way, and will probably facilitate it. grad schools want certain gpa as well as other requirements. Note that the word is in bold. That is for a very good reason, evren. Because if you get 5 equally brilliant students competing for 4 positions, and the gpa isn’t up there, guess which one will get the kicking. if you guessed the one with the lowest gpa, you get an A. ( i’m shameless.)
if you are going to a university that looks at more than these things, you are going to georgetown, harvard, or someplace where money is REALLY TRULY no matter, and if that is the case, you are in like Flynn anyway or you have no chance at all.
Another term is “damning with faint praise.” The profs are fooling themselves if they believe they are well-intentioned, this is a terrible kind of reference to recieve, probably worse than one that includes both positive and negative in a detailed way. Not only is it very noticeable to the reader what the writer is not saying, it suggests that you do not know the particular professor well enough to know his or her true opinion of you.
This is why it is very very very important to ask potential references if they would recommend you highly. If they do not feel they can, they have an out and you can find someone else who will write something that can actually help your application.
The gradeless masses who graduated from UC Santa Cruz (until a couple years ago when they instituted grades) had no troubles- and indeed, a great acceptance rate- with grad school. The only exception was medical school, which tends to be pretty intense about who they accept.
WHAT LETTERS OF RECOMMENDATION SAY …
… AND WHAT THEY REALLY MEAN
Hard-working, workmanlike, industrious, diligent, persistent. This person is not very original, but he sure tries hard.
Shy, low-key, keeps his own counsel. This person is socially dysfunctional.
I recommend this person … without reservation, with enthusiasm, with my highest endorsement. Hire this person.
I recommend this person … warmly, strongly, to any department with a job in her area. Do not hire this person.
Well-grounded. This scholar is hopelessly mired in bourgeois notions of proof.
This student is always willing to engage in vigorous debate. This student is really obnoxious.
Solid, competent, scoured the archives, good study habits. This student is a plodding dullard who will never produce anything of interest.
This person is an outstanding scholar (without any mention of teaching). This person is lousy in the classroom.
This person is an outstanding teacher (without any mention of research). This person is a lousy scholar.
Path-breaking, brilliant, first-rate, making fundamental contributions to the field. This scholar is at the top of her discipline.
This is a person of great promise, who is working on important issues. As a scholar, this person has not yet arrived.
Eclectic or synthetic scholarship. This academic is a flake.
At first, this student wasn’t sure she wanted to be an English major, but in the last couple of months, her work has really flowered. This student has a lot of bad grades.
Independent thinker. This student is arrogant and wouldn’t follow his adviser’s recommendations. (Depending on the context, however, it can also mean imaginative.)
The acorn hasn’t fallen far from the tree. This student’s work is dreadfully derivative and adds nothing to what her dissertation adviser has already written.
Articulate. This person is a safe minority scholar who will not give you any trouble.
He will blossom with further mentoring. I have serious doubts that I will ever see this person publish an article, much less a book.
Smart. This person is clever but superficial. (Although, if said about someone in the humanities, it might mean that the person is well-dressed.)
When this student walks into class, the room lights up. We had long discussions after class. I am hopelessly in love with this student.
A note of caution: Interpreting letters of recommendation is a tricky business. A term like “hard-working” can be the kiss of death for a job candidate if the only other adjectives in the letter focus on effort. But if “hard-working” is sandwiched between long, gushing passages about keen intellect and boundless imagination, it can clinch the deal. Context is crucial.
SOURCE: Chronicle reporting
Yes, this is true, but I wanted to emphasize it for another reason. And this not only applies to grad school, but for employers as well.
I told my students to let me know if they intended to give me as a reference. The reason was that the instructor teaches class after after class; the student may NOT apply for a job or for grad school right after graduation. Or, they may but be in a part-time program and graduate a year or two after you have taught them.
When I got such a notice, I was especially careful to keep personal notes on the student, along with anything that would jog my memory at a much later date, along with a good assessment of their finer qualities & what I thought should be emphasized in a recommendation, and then kept these notes filed and available.
I HATED getting an enquiry on someone that I had had in a class 3 or 4 years ago, and then having to try to dredge the salient facts out of my memory. Patriculary if the student was one who, for whatever reason, did not particulary “imbed” themselves in my memory.
And from the other side, when I recently went to professors from years ago, and to one professor who had just taught me one class this semester, for references for grad school, I gave them a packet of info to help them prepare. I gave them my resume, a draft of my personal statement for my application, the abstract for my thesis, and appropriately addressed stamped envelopes.
A little more relevant perhaps to the OP, when I talked to grad schools about what they were looking for, no one really cared about GPA. The most anyone said was “I take it your grades were good?” They cared much more about the GRE scores. The fact that I have been out of school for several years may be a factor in that, I suppose. But it seems a lot harder to compare the GPAs from various different schools in different times and different places and say anything meaningful comparing various students.
> The gradeless masses who graduated from UC Santa Cruz (until a couple years
> ago when they instituted grades) had no troubles- and indeed, a great
> acceptance rate- with grad school. The only exception was medical school,
> which tends to be pretty intense about who they accept.
The graduates of my undergraduate school, New College in Sarasota, Florida, also have no grades, and they do very well at getting into graduate and professional schools.