We faculty give out letter grades for the semester, and my practice has usually been not to give letter grades on exams or homework and just concentrate on points. However, if I were to give a letter grade on the final exam this semester -- 90 points or more for an A, 75 for B, 60 for C, 50 for D -- then the proverbial "curve" of letter grades would look like this chart (above). This includes only the final for students who took all three exams.Comments:
- Performance is skewed toward the high end shows in that there were more B grades than D grades.
- Because performance is skewed toward the high end, if I graded "on the curve," it would rip off the students in the middle and the high end who busted their you-know-what to bring their grade up.
- It was a tough test to ace, yet relatively few students got an F on the final.
- There were a TON of C and B grades.
- All together: it was a tough but reasonable and not completely impossible final exam.
Overall: Most of you worked faithfully and very hard this semester and brought up your exam scores: 64% of the class did better on the final exam, percentage-wise, than they did on midterm 1.
That being the case, most of you have done the proverbial "yeoman's job" this semester in a tough course. My hat goes off to you.
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