No seminar classes? In CS when I went (and in EE at Stanford recently) lots of grad students went to a seminar, and got an A for showing up and doing one talk a semester at most.
Yeah, in the few graded seminars I saw (most were just pass/fail and everyone passed), the grading rubric was explicitly given as “Show up every week, get a B. Give a talk, get an A.”.
We had to register for seminar, but it was all pass/fail. I would assume that when graded seminars exist, they’re basically a free A for showing up and slightly participating.
That’s right. You’d have to work really hard to not get an A in any seminar I’ve either been in or been invited to.
IIRC your official dissertation class didn’t get a grade each term, but got carried over until you finally finished. I assume I got on A on mine, but I was out of there. Probably the grade that is cared about least in the entire university system.
The one I sat in on had more people than talk slots, and most of the talks were done by either guests or those further along on their research, so it was a show up every week and get an A deal.