With Crackdown on Grade Inflation, Princeton Students Feeling the Heat

ap.tbo.com ^ | Jan 22, 2005 | Geoff Mulvihill

[Polybius]

Grades don't always follow a bell-curve distribution. If you have a large group of intelligent, highly motivated students (which, presumably, anyway, is what Princeton students should be) and an objective exam, why is there no legitimate reason why the entire class couldn't legitimately earn all A's?............jude24

I have to ask, are you really serious with this thought or are you just being tongue in cheek? Is that how they graded you during your high school years?.......... Dustbunny

In an academically rigorous college prep high school, the grading criteria are set from the beginning.

Any score above 93% is an "A". Any score below 70% is an "F".

If the entire class scores above 93%, every last student gets an "A". If the entire class scores below 70%, every last student gets an "F".

That is the way real life works. If every zebra in the herd is lighting fast, every zebra lives. If every zebra in the herd is painfully slow, every zebra dies.

During my Pre-Med days, a student transferred to our University at the start of Junior year from a 2-year junior college bragging about his perfect 4.0 G.P.A. and about how he had been first in his junior college class.

Once he got into real academic competition, those of us with less than perfect G.P.A.'s in a much more challenging academic battleground chewed him up and spit him out. He failed miserably and dropped out after one semester.

Academic excellence is an absolute and is not a matter of whether you are better or worse than your current classmates.

[Dustbunny]

Hopefully none of these 'academics' have become physicians or Surgeons that will be treating the 'non-academics' for illnesses. Have already had a run in with one of these academics that must have been graded on a 'bell curve' sure don't want to run into another.