# Everybody gets an A at Yale **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 8, 2023, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300 "2023-12-08T14:09:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2023, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/101 "2023-12-10T00:51:05Z")
Perhaps. I did teach high school, too, and community college. In my classes, a grade under 70 was always “meeting with instructor required” to develop a remediation for a potential higher grade (if the student wanted it, and typically to bring the class grade to 70, not to get an A). ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2023, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/102 "2023-12-10T02:02:00Z")
I just wanted to say something about why schools have become so much more selective. I started college in 1954. My age cohort had started to recover, but only slightly, from the depths of the depression. But there was another factor. Schools had expanded to accomodate the GIs, but that had passed by 1954. So schools, including the ivy I went to had excess capacity and relatively few applicants. So it was really easy to get in. My SAT scores were good but nowhere near the 1500s that seemed de rigeur for the likes of Harvard and Yale these days. IIRC, my scores were 619 and 694, for a total of 1313 (they didn’t round those days). I think I have mentioned this before, or maybe in another thread. We found that American students with AP calculus, even 5, really didn’t understand calculus and we put them in a special section with one less hour a week, but the same syllabus as calculus 101. They had learned a cookbook course, but didn’t understand the ideas. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2023, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/103 "2023-12-10T03:00:08Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > It also feels weird to me to have the cut point in a course be the thing that is fixed and everything else designed around that. I think it’s just a convention people don’t think about. Imagine a teacher who has 100 points students can earn on a100 question test. The test takes 3 hours. A review of the scores reveals that every single student who got 70 or more points answered the easiest 50 questions perfectly; knowledge of even 40% of the “hard” half perfectly predicts knowledge of the first half. So the next year, the teacher drops the easy questions, so the test takes two hours and is less grueling. Kids who used to get 50 or fewer correct now get none correct, and get the same F they got before. Kids who used to get 90 correct and get an A now get 40/50 correct, 80%. They missed the 10 hardest questions before, so they miss the 10 hardest questions now. Shouldn’t they still get an A? People will call “grade inflation” if that 80% earns an A. Yes, i hate the idea that “90% is an A”. An A should represent some level of mastery, and that might be 95% or it might be 50%, depending on what kind of questions are asked. ---
**Author:** ![kitap](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kitap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kitap)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2023, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/104 "2023-12-10T05:19:53Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > The letter grade system should map to the actual knowledge attained by the students. > > If a student who is slightly above average and a student who is the best student in the class both get A+, you have lost information about the relative differences between the two people. If all your students are crowding up in the ‘A’ grade, you have no way of discerning between them, and neither do the people looking for grad school contenders, scholarship candidates, etc. And employers can’t tell who the real superstars are. I suspect that’s in fact what’s going on - an ‘equity’ push to make sure everyone comes out of university relatively indistinguishable from each other. > > When I went to college, it was common in engineering and physics to get exams that were legendarily hard. Hard as in there were whispers of a guy years ago so smart that he actually \*finished the exam. > > I once got 27% on a physics exam and it got me an 8 on the Stanine system, equivalent to an A. It was one of the top marks in the class. To me, that was wrong, and it was an extreme example. Some profs will use the bell curve to normalize horrible exam questions and hide the fact that the exam was poorly done. Or, they grade to a curve in a class with 20 people, leading to inaccurate grading. I shouldn’t have gotten an A if I couldn’t anwer questions the course was teaching. But the prof did throw a lot of curveballs on the exam. > > The bell curve certainly had its issues. In physics we had to take an honors linear algebra course as mandatory in second year. But the same class was mandatory for Engineering Physics majors in fourth year. So they came into the class with WAY more math background than the lowly physics students, and Engineering Physics was the hardest faculty to get into and to stay in. So that course always had bifurcated grades - the Eng Phys guys pulled up the average by getting straight A’s, while the physics people were generally significantly behind. That wasn’t really fair. > > If we are going to get rid of letter grades, we’ll need to lean more on things like the GRE or professional certification tests. And if we’re going to do that, we might as well scrap the degree itself, make everything optional, and rely on exams and work experience when hiring people. > > That’s actually happening. Degree requirements are being dropped all over the place in favor of other ways of evaluating applicants. This is fallout from things like grade inflation and a general decline in academic rigor in many universities. I took a chemistry class meant for people who had never had it before and weren’t planning on taking more. He ended up having to grade on a curve because I think everyone would have flunked. I was getting 20 or 25 out of 100 on tests. Those were Cs. By the end of the semester an A was, IIRC, a 52 out of a hundred. At least one test there were 3 As. The class probably had 100 people. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2023, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/105 "2023-12-10T19:06:09Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I think I have mentioned this before, or maybe in another thread. We found that American students with AP calculus, even 5, really didn’t understand calculus and we put them in a special section with one less hour a week, but the same syllabus as calculus 101. They had learned a cookbook course, but didn’t understand the ideas. Do you think this might be because of the expansion of AP classes? My first year of college (over 50 years ago) half the freshman class started with Calculus 2 thanks to AP tests, and it didn’t seem to be a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2023, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/106 "2023-12-11T00:29:49Z")
I have no idea why, but I did not get the impression that these students came in prepared for Calc 2 and certainly not for advanced Calc. They really didn’t undertand–most of them–limits, which are the heart of calculus. ---
**Author:** ![keeganst94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a6a055/32.png) [@keeganst94](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/keeganst94)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/107 "2023-12-18T20:35:55Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > A kid who fails Calculus and retakes it and makes an A has been eliminated from many colleges. Nothing can make up for the fact that they failed it the first time. It is my understanding that the same is true for med school: if ypu have a rough first semester of undergrad, whatever the reason, they will never over look those grades, and you’ll never get in. FWIW, at the Canadian University I attended, this forgiveness does exist. In my third year my father passed and I experienced a significant depression, causing me to fail two courses (the first time I had ever gotten less than a B). As someone who did in some way define and measure themselves by grades and was interested in graduate studies, it was significantly demotivating. However, I spoke with the registrar and was told that in light of the circumstances if I completed the courses the following semester my first grade would be expunged from my transcript. I retook the course and passed, and indeed my first mark disappeared. It was probably a factor in my getting into graduate school, ironically in the exact subspecialty that I had failed the course in. ---
**Author:** ![OldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/3bc359/32.png) [@OldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2023, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/108 "2023-12-18T21:31:31Z")
Not sure about the grade distribution at Yale College, but at the Yale School of Management, the highest grade is “High honors” and it is limited to 10% of the class. The next highest grade is “Honors” is limited to 25% (or actually 35% limit on High honors plus honors). There is also a presumption that 10% of students in each core class will receive a grade of “Pass” roughly equivalent to a D in that getting a Pass in too many courses will not let you graduate with a degree. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/109 "2023-12-19T04:13:28Z")
> [@MandaJo](#): > > I think people like to think thats what grades mean, but that’s not how they use them > A kid who fails Calculus and retakes it and makes an A has been eliminated from many colleges. Nothing can make up for the fact that they failed it the first time. It is my understanding that the same is true for med school: if ypu have a rough first semester of undergrad, whatever the reason, they will never over look those grades, and you’ll never get in. Well, it’s like the old joke: “Q: What do you call the guy who graduated at the bottom of his med school class? A: Doctor!” As someone else alluded to, Harvard receives 50,000 applicants of which it accepts around 4%. 60% of those applicants are qualified in terms of grades and standardized tests and whatnot. That basically means that even for top students, getting into an Ivy League school is effectively “random”. > [@MandaJo](#): > > And yes, finally, having an **evaluative teat** at the end resolves a lot of these issues. I’m sure this is a typo, but I still think “evaluative teat” is an apt description of the higher academic system. 😃 I’m not an academic (or a particularly good student, truth be told). But I don’t really understand all the controversy or complexity around grades with “curves” and all that other bullshit. A course contains a body of material the students are expected to learn. Through a collection of tests, quizzes, homework, projects, presentations, papers, and other work, I would expect the student to demonstrate their mastery of the material. If everyone attending the class earns an A, they should all get an A IMHO. There is also the question of ultimately who are all these multitudes of rankings and grades actually for? Sure, certain companies in certain industries want very elite academic backgrounds - top tier law firms, investment banks, strategy consulting firms like Mckinsey, Bain, and BCG, NASA, etc. But plenty of really smart people don’t want to kill themselves to work 100 hours a week as an overpaid corporate drone. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/110 "2023-12-19T04:32:58Z")
Considering that Yale is going to be attended by valedictorians, or at least people who were potentially capable of that, it shouldn’t be too surprising. Having pursued a major where, once I got to O-chem, I found myself treading water in a sea of them, not getting A’s can be a real shock for a lot of them. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Drake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ad7895/32.png) [@Dr.Drake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Drake)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/111 "2023-12-19T05:14:12Z")
Who are the grades for? Ideally, for the student, to let them know how well they are performing relative to expectations. In practice, they’re a multivalent mess. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/112 "2023-12-19T09:07:36Z")
Grades serve multiple purposes: For academics to find candidates for grad school, or for scholarships or other awards. For potentiao employers to assess how much of what the candidate was supposed to have learned they actually learned. To show enough ability to warrant allowing you to take the next course in series without wasting everyone’s time and your money. To act as a filter for being accepting into programs with high demand and quotas. If there is a distribution in abiity in class but everyone gets an ‘A’ in the course, you have destroyed information. It’s no longer possible to tell the truly exceptional from the merely good. To the extent that it’s valuable for various actors in society to be able to sort people by that characteristic, grade inflation does real damage to the economy and to the lives of the sturents. And eventually, to the reputation of the school as people realize that a Harvard ‘A’ isn’t all that. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/113 "2023-12-19T13:19:22Z")
Well, but that depends on what you are looking for in a Harvard/Yale grad, doesn’t it? Most organizations looking for the datum “Yale Honors Grad” may not be looking for the awesomest researcher alive, they are looking for someone whose aptitude and temperament were suited to get into Yale and perform above average for Yale, AND, perhaps even more so, for the sort of person who fits that particular kind of socioacademic ecosystem very well, because the organization is or aspires to be part of it or at least in its orbit. I know at least that I would not push a child of mine to that s/he MUST go to an Ivy, unless that is what THEY want. … Also when we see these discussions I can’t help but be reminded of the often repeated whining in the political field about wanting to look at the SAT/LSAT/GMAT scores, GPAs, transcripts, etc of nominees and candidates. It’s reductionistic. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/114 "2023-12-19T14:57:43Z")
When I was in pharmacy and med school (back in the Stone Age), most classes were graded on an A-F scale (\<60=F, 60-70=D, 70-80=C, 80-90=B, \>90=A). A few classes were Pass/Fail. I never liked the Pass/Fail classes because they didn’t motivate me to learn the subjects to the best of my ability, unless they were exceptionally interesting. I’d just learn them well enough to pass, then go out partying or do something equally unproductive. _Why should I spend many hours studying a subject only to get the same grade as Bob, who put in minimal effort and spent the remainder of his night goofing off?_ My MOA for studying for a Pass/Fail test was 3 steps: 1) Skim the material (class notes, textbook) quickly to _familiarize_ myself with the subject matter. 2) Read the material again a little slower to _understand_ the subject matter. 3) Study the material again, more slowly, to _memorize_ the subject matter. At that point, I could get a **Pass** grade. If I was studying for an A-F test, I’d add a 4th step: Re-read the material once again, even slower, to gain a _deeper understanding_ of the subject matter. This almost always resulted in an A, and the subject was more likely to embed in my long-term memory. If I stopped at Step 3, the subject would more likely just embed in my short-term memory—long enough to pass the test. My motivation for getting high grades was primarily practical: to secure a top residency program post-graduation (they are fiercely competitive). But, the dopamine rush from a high class ranking (out-competing fellow classmates) was also a factor, as well as simply liking the look of A’s on my report card. A’s are attractive and sublime. C’s and below are ugly and embarrassing. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/115 "2023-12-19T15:35:20Z")
That’s you, though. Maybe that’s how most people are, I don’t know, but it’s not how I am. I got As in classes I couldn’t give a damn about by doing exactly the same thing in classes I was interested in. I didn’t do any extra review or anything. When I was in learning mode, it didn’t matter what the subject was – I just soaked up everything I needed to. The amount of effort in a pass-fail class would have been the same for me. (Though, as I mentioned before, maybe a three-tier system would be a happy medium, with an F, P, and P+, say.) ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/116 "2023-12-19T16:12:51Z")
> [@Tibby](#): > > A few classes were Pass/Fail. I never liked the Pass/Fail classes because they didn’t motivate me to learn the subjects to the best of my ability, unless they were exceptionally interesting At my college, the feedback wasn’t a grade but a narrative evaluation. If we were coasting, it would be very obvious to anyone who read the evaluation. I always (usually) put in optimal effort, knowing I would be evaluated on my work and mastery of the material. No grades, and as far as I know, no one failed anything. ---
**Author:** ![Tibby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tibby/32/17030_2.png) [@Tibby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tibby)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/117 "2023-12-19T16:30:39Z")
I agree that narrative evaluations are ideal, and that’s how we were assessed during clinical rounds and labs. But, for didactic courses, it was letter grades, or Pass/Fail. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [December 19, 2023, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/118 "2023-12-19T16:46:19Z")
> [@Procrustus](#): > > At my college, the feedback wasn’t a grade but a narrative evaluation. At my undergraduate school, it was also a narrative evaluation system. It worked very well. It had a very good reputation for getting its graduates into good graduate and professional schools and getting things like Fulbright Scholarships to pay for that. My undergraduate school was New College in Sarasota, Florida. This was before DeSantis decided to destroy the college in the past two years, basically just for the fun of it. ---
**Author:** ![Spice\_Weasel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spice_weasel/32/5435_2.png) [@Spice\_Weasel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spice_Weasel)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2023, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/119 "2023-12-23T18:59:31Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > If the choice is between taking a year off and having a chance to have very good grades for the next year and going back to school immediately after the eight weeks that it took to recover from the accident and getting poor grades for that year, I would certainly choose to take the year off. I did this in college. I was hospitalized for suicidal ideation in Fall of my sophomore year and I was able to get medical withdrawals - which don’t affect your grades - and the following Winter when my grades dropped (I got a C in something - Astronomy, I think) it became apparent that I needed serious psychological help before I could get through school. I was so overwhelmed I wasn’t even thinking of the potential ramifications of withdrawing without some kind of medical explanation. In the end I had to petition the academic board for a retroactive medical withdrawal and a bunch of other stuff. Between this and piecing my life back together, it took fully a year of my time - not counting the two semesters I had tried to struggle through. I started in the same class as my husband. I graduated two years after he did. People thought I was giving up, but what I was really doing was making a strategic decision to take time off rather than risk my GPA. And it was a reasonably effective strategy. I don’t think my cumulative grades fully reflected my academic capabilities, but I managed to graduate _cum laude_ with all As and one A+ my senior year. And it was a hard fucking year, as I was severely depressed and anxious for most of it, but at least this time around I had some skills to cope. It really frustrates me when people say grades don’t matter. For me they were a North Star, motivating me to keep going through the kind of hardship that would have made other people quit. I recently brought my diploma out of the closet and put it on my dresser (near my home office) so that I can look at it and remember how I’m capable of doing hard things. Sometimes I forget what I’m capable of. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2023, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300/120 "2023-12-23T19:54:16Z")
Thank you for sharing that. They can matter to us for a lot of reasons even if they often don’t matter much to third parties. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everybody-gets-an-a-at-yale/994300.md?page=7)