{"id":2522,"date":"2008-12-22T11:39:55","date_gmt":"2008-12-22T11:39:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2008\/12\/materials-girl-the-bell-curve-doth-toll.html"},"modified":"2008-12-22T11:39:55","modified_gmt":"2008-12-22T11:39:55","slug":"materials_girl_the_bell_curve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/2008\/12\/materials_girl_the_bell_curve.html","title":{"rendered":"Materials Girl: The bell curve doth toll"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted on behalf of Materials Girl<\/em><\/p>\n

Finals are, at last, over and winter break has begun! \u2018Tis the season for living at home, sleeping in, catching up on blogging, and checking grades online obsessively! (More precisely, I am procrastinating on studying for the GRE<\/span>. Ugh. The vocabulary words I\u2019m familiar with nowadays are on par with trimethylxanthine, eigenfunction, and nanorod, not termagant, eleemosynary, and nadir).<\/p>\n

As far as grading goes, some form of curving seems standard among non-humanities classes. My science professors tend to aim for \u201cnice\u201d exam averages of 60-80, then curve results so that the wretched students scoring 50% get C’s instead of F’s. The brilliant engineering profs think everything is completely straightforward and write \u201ceasy\u201d exams. Hah!<\/p>\n

From a student\u2019s perspective, I generally don\u2019t have problems with curving. It\u2019s nice to not worry about getting +90% on everything and risk having a few arithmetical errors or forgotten arrows kill perceived performance. However, if someone achieves those high scores and stays well above average, an A still isn\u2019t guaranteed. And, that really sucks. It seems to boil down to two choices: battling tests & grading rubrics to score some set percentage, or battling classmates to be at the top of the pack. At the end of the day, it\u2019s just a matter of a little luck and how well you fight (and get back up when beaten down) \u2013 regardless of the opponent.<\/p>\n

Everyone says to not worry about GPAs, but it can\u2019t be completely written off \u2013 especially since some schools give out A\u2019s more easily than others. Experience and recommendations aside, how much do grad schools and companies really factor in what university an applicant comes from? At career fairs, recruiters always, always begin by looking for the GPA<\/span> on my resume. It does make sense, since a 5-10 minute conversation can\u2019t really tell them how qualified or knowledgeable I might be. But, what if I had a B in a class because my peers were a little bit better that time around, and I could\u2019ve taken the same class the next term and gotten an A? I don\u2019t think the 4.0 from community college will be of much help…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted on behalf of Materials Girl Finals are, at last, over and winter break has begun! \u2018Tis the season for living at home, sleeping in, catching up on blogging, and checking grades online obsessively! (More precisely, I am procrastinating on studying for the GRE. Ugh. The vocabulary words I\u2019m familiar with nowadays are on par with trimethylxanthine, eigenfunction, and nanorod, not termagant, eleemosynary, and nadir). As far as grading goes, some form of curving seems standard among non-humanities classes. My science professors tend to aim for \u201cnice\u201d exam averages of 60-80, then curve results so that the wretched students scoring  … Read more<\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-materials-girl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/thescepticalchymist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}