How does the curve work?

Derpina

I think I'm one of the weaker (if not weakest) students in one of my courses but I know we are graded on a curve. I was wondering if I would automatically fail the course if I'm one of the weaker students? Even if I managed to get at least a C?

P.S. The rest of my class is pretty smart

112233

No, you will not automatically fail. It really depends on the teacher though, your final mark, and the class's average.

BeAnBeAn

derp

ryan

Since it is curved the bottom X% will fail. Exactly what X is depends on the department / class. It is usually a small number though. Just try your best and work to get your mark as high as you can.

Canuckred

Basically it works that the teachers have to give a certain percentage of each grade. This changes by faculty and how difficult the course is. It becomes more favorable as you get towards fourth year as it assumes that a lot of people who got C's and F's in 1st and 2nd year have dropped out or been expelled.

To see the average grades for your faculty look here: http://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/irp/students/grades_report/grades.report.pdf

For one of my classes it was around

10-20% A's

25-45% B's

30-50% C's

5-15% D's

0-15% F's

The teacher generally grades all of the finals and looks for breaks of 1% or so in the overall score to divide between grades between the percentages so there is some differentiation. If everyone puts in a good effort and gets OK grades than none will fail, but in a large first year class there are always students who don't take it seriously.

BeAnBeAn

@Canuckred Why would curve be more favourable in 4th year courses if most of the people who got C's and F's in lower-division have dropped out or been RTW? This would mean that no one is really a C or F student in upper division and just happen to be on the lower-end of the class average and the curve would make them look like a C or F student. That doesn't make sense.

ryan

The curves in upper division courses are done so that the average student falls in the B's rather than the C's. As well they change it so hardly anyone fails unless you do particularly poorly.

ezc

I've never actually been in a class that marks on the curve (science, education, crim, etc.).  If it exists at SFU, it's fairly rare and maybe limited to a few depts.  There's a lot of classes that manipulate the grading scheme to bump up all the students or set a grading scheme to bump down students, which is a little different than marking on the curve.  

Lucid

From my experience, it seems like the engineering, math, comp sci and business faculties are the most guilty of curving.  In my case, it's mostly worked favorably, but I could see it severely hurting those who always get slightly below class average.

ezc

lol I forgot about engineering.  I'm pretty sure all engineering students have some sort of pact where they all avoid studying and fail their classes so the curve bumps them up.  

ryan

I haven't experience any curving in math or computing. There is a reasonable amount of scaling though.

Faculties that I have seen curve marks are econ, business, and statistics (..figures)

BeAnBeAn

why figures?

ezc

I think Ryan's pointing out the connection between the bell curve and stats.

Canuckred

@BeAnBeAn It's more favorable to the 3rd and 4th year students because as most of the C, D, and F students drop out, if they kept the same scaling the A- students would drop to B students, B students to C+ students and so on, They up the percentages so that students retain roughly the same grade in upper divisions as they received in lower divisions. I find that the change in the curve is a little excessive and it makes it easier to get a good mark in upper division classes.

Flash

There is no scale in most Applied Science and Science department.

Most of my courses scale is:
90‐100 A+
85‐89 A
80‐84 A−
76‐79 B+
72‐75 B
68‐71 B−
64‐67 C+
60‐63 C
55‐59 C−
50‐54 D

or the rougher scale

>= 95 A+
>= 90 A
>= 85 A-
>= 80 B+
>= 75 B
>= 70 B-
>= 65 C+
>= 60 C
>= 55 C-
>= 50 D
< 50 F

But no such crap as 5% or whatever MUST fail. You get over 50%, you pass guaranteed. You get 90/95%, you get A+ no matter what.

Sucks to be in non-BSc

BeAnBeAn

@Canuckred Cool, I'm not as scared anymore for upper-division stuff then. 

@ezc Ah, I see. I get the joke now.

BeAnBeAn

@Flash Yeah it does suck but BSc is also way harder and a lot of people fail. But I guess the cool thing is that you don't need to really do that great and just passing is already great and you'll end up making more money than most Arts students who have to get dem high marks. 

I wish I was good at math.