Online exclusive: Curves allow students to compete with each other
By Harold Lee
June 22, 2003 9:00 p.m.
UCLA’s incoming freshmen can expect to enroll in and
attend a class along with hundreds of fellow classmates. The grades
for these large classes, particularly those in the sciences, will
sometimes be graded according to a curve.
The decision to curve grades rests upon individual professors
though departments recommend grade curving for a large class size,
which is usually found in lower division classes.
When a grading curve is applied, instructors can gauge the
difficulty of their exams, and students can compare their
performance with other classmates, said Chand Vishwanathan, an
electrical engineering professor.
“Grade distribution curves give you a feeling of your
standing in the class,” Vishwanathan said.
The UCLA Division of Life Sciences strongly recommends grade
curves for life science courses 1 through 4, which are required by
the core curriculum, Nobel said.
For the large classes of the life science core curriculum, grade
distribution curves are used to keep classes consistent on a
quarterly basis.
“When we have 500 to 800 students and when instructors
vary from quarter to quarter, we need to keep uniformity in grading
from quarter to quarter,” said Park Nobel, interim chair of
the organismic, biology, ecology and evolution department.
Curves can provide useful information for instructors and
students, but they can also adversely affect a student’s
grade in the class.
For example, the electrical engineering department recommends
that the top 20 percent to 25 percent of students in a grade
distribution curve receive an A grade, Vishwanathan said.
Therefore, a student who barely misses the 25 percent mark by a
few points can still receive a B.
For the last two years, the top 18 to 19 percent of students
received an A grade for the first midterm examination in Life
Sciences 1, Nobel said.
“It would be unfair for there to be a higher percentage of
As in one quarter and a lower percentage of As in a different
quarter,” he said.
Students who have taken classes that have been graded on a curve
have experienced both the advantages and disadvantages of a
distribution curve.
“I think (grade distribution curves) can be helpful, but
they can hurt you if the class is full of people who passed the
Advanced Placement exams in high school,” said Claude Distin,
first-year biochemistry major.
“(Incoming freshmen) just have to be more prepared than
other students. It’s not how well you know the stuff.
It’s how well you know it in comparison to other
students,” Distin said.
Aside from class size and grading policies, students have also
found curved classes to be more difficult than uncurved
classes.
“Usually courses with (grade distribution curves) were a
lot tougher,” said first year computer science and
engineering student, Vinesh Gopakumar. “I’ve had
classes without curves, and they’ve been easier.”
Being graded on a curve can result in a higher sense of
competition between classmates and can sometimes cause students to
act differently towards each other in curved classes as opposed to
uncurved classes.
“The only thing I don’t like is, in a curved class,
students aren’t as willing to help each other because of
competition,” Gopakumar said.
