{"id":1173,"date":"2008-08-20T15:22:51","date_gmt":"2008-08-20T20:22:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2014-05-28T13:44:07","modified_gmt":"2014-05-28T18:44:07","slug":"you-can-ask-any-tom-dick-or-stanely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/?p=1173","title":{"rendered":"You can ask any Tom, Dick or Stanely…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where can I find class averages in each course? For example, I want to know what the class average was for AST101 and AST201. Also, do professors always have to do that bell curve grading system thing I keep hearing about? Do they do that for small classes, too?<\/em><\/p>\n

?<\/em><\/p>\n

Course averages are not published and accessible to students (boo). Your best chance is to find someone who has taken the course, and ask them what it says in their academic history. Even then, ROSI only publishes course averages as letter grades rounded to the nearest +\/-.<\/p>\n

I took those courses in the 2004-5 academic year and the averages were both B-. However, don’t let that trick you into thinking that they are especially difficult. In place of critical analysis, these courses predominantly require the memorization of small facts. VERY interesting small facts, mind you. You may just look at the world differently afterwards.<\/p>\n

What I’m saying is that if you are willing to invest some grunt work, anyone is capable of pulling off a set of stellar marks (pun intended).<\/p>\n

In general, I wouldn’t use course averages as a good indicator of a course’s difficulty. They all seem to be C+ or B-.<\/p>\n

The “Bell Curve”, not to be confused with the figure of (arguably) the hottest Disney princess<\/a>, is very rare at UofT. It is a formula applied to a set of grades that are drastically skewed<\/a> from the desired distribution. It almost always happens when grades are very low (ie. half the class failed a test), and it is enacted to bring these students to a pass. This should imply that the decision to use a bell curving system is retroactive, responding to an inappropriate means of evaluation (ie. you didn’t cover some of the test content). A Prof can’t dish out bell curves like they’re going out of style (ie. pixie cuts, shoulder pads, frosted tips, etc.). It is a serious decision that needs approval by the Departmental Chair<\/a>.????<\/p>\n

With that said, there is no policy which mandates professors to inform you that they have used a bell curve. With subjective forms of evaluation (ie. essays), Profs can distort marks to achieve a bell-like curve. This isn’t too shocking, as long as marks are fair relative to other students’ marks.<\/p>\n

The already-rare bell curve is even rarer<\/a> in small courses, where Prof are less concerned about finding the ideal distribution of grades.<\/p>\n

Understood? Good.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where can I find class averages in each course? For example, I want to know what the class average was for AST101 and AST201. Also, do professors always have to do that bell curve grading system thing I keep hearing about? Do they do that for small classes, too? ?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-courses","category-grades"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/askastudent.utoronto.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}