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How do you pick courses to kick grade curving in your favor?


jerkstore

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Posted
Have you guys thought about this? Which sorts of courses should be pursued/avoided to lessen your chances of getting curve-****ed?

 

Is there any strategy here at all?

 

Uh. Take first year courses, because lots of people haven't realized they actually need to study yet.

 

Also read departmental curving policies. Some tend to be unexpectedly harsh. I know Sociology at UWO is brutal.

Posted
Uh. Take first year courses, because lots of people haven't realized they actually need to study yet.

 

Also read departmental curving policies. Some tend to be unexpectedly harsh. I know Sociology at UWO is brutal.

 

Thanks-babe.gif

Posted

I guess I meant more...which types of courses to take. I.e. do people who take art history always tend to suck?

 

As we all know you can't fill up each year with 100 level courses, you need a certain amount at your level each year.

Posted
I guess I meant more...which types of courses to take. I.e. do people who take art history always tend to suck?

 

As we all know you can't fill up each year with 100 level courses, you need a certain amount at your level each year.

 

Lol! I'd say take psych but............

Posted

Hmm maybe take mathy and sciencey courses that are required for social sciencey majors. Like neuroscience... science with a bunch of social science kids (y).

 

Oh and also see if your school has courses that you're not allowed to take if you're majoring in that subject. I took two of those last year. Lots of people didn't care because it wasn't for their major. I got very high 90s in both, lol.

 

People who take art history are probably very essay-savvy. The spread probably isn't as wide, either.. so a good mark is probably still lower than what you'd want.

Posted
Hmm maybe take mathy and sciencey courses that are required for social sciencey majors. Like neuroscience... science with a bunch of social science kids (y).

 

Oh and also see if your school has courses that you're not allowed to take if you're majoring in that subject. I took two of those last year. Lots of people didn't care because it wasn't for their major. I got very high 90s in both, lol.

 

People who take art history are probably very essay-savvy. The spread probably isn't as wide, either.. so a good mark is probably still lower than what you'd want.

 

Now that's what I'm talking about.

Posted
Hmm maybe take mathy and sciencey courses that are required for social sciencey majors. Like neuroscience... science with a bunch of social science kids (y).

 

LOL you gotta be kidding me they let you take those courses as a science major?

Posted
LOL you gotta be kidding me they let you take those courses as a science major?

 

Uh, some. They cracked down recently on some of the physics and astronomy ones and said that you'll lose your first year physics credit if you take them. Some other ones don't count towards your degree but you can take them anyways.. such as "Earth Rocks!", commonly known as "Earth Rocks for Jocks".

 

You kiddin' him right?

 

Unsure. I really can't detect sarcasm on the interweb. It's a problem.

Posted
Uh, some. They cracked down recently on some of the physics and astronomy ones and said that you'll lose your first year physics credit if you take them. Some other ones don't count towards your degree but you can take them anyways.. such as "Earth Rocks!", commonly known as "Earth Rocks for Jocks".

 

 

 

Unsure. I really can't detect sarcasm on the interweb. It's a problem.

 

Haha westerners would. At my schools there are "natural science courses" courses like "human biology" (grade 10 science) that they won't let science majors take :(

I love hearing my friends complain about how hard their NATS courses are, kinda tickles me.

Posted
Uh. Take first year courses, because lots of people haven't realized they actually need to study yet.

 

Also read departmental curving policies. Some tend to be unexpectedly harsh. I know Sociology at UWO is brutal.

 

I agree, in most of my 3rd year courses right now the profs don't care about the average (my biophysics class average was 89% going into the final and the final wasn't that bad)

Posted
Have you guys thought about this? Which sorts of courses should be pursued/avoided to lessen your chances of getting curve-****ed?

 

Is there any strategy here at all?

 

or go to a school where they can only curve up

 

i.e. mcgill

Posted

Go to a school where they don't curve at all?

 

I've never had my marks curved (even in the stupid machine language programming course where the entire class failed the midterm).

 

It's nice to go into a final exam knowing exactly what mark I need to get a 90, 95, etc. in the course. But it isn't that great when you have courses like the above-mentioned machine language programming course.

 

At least I've never had to "worry" about my standing in a course compared to my peers.

 

As for "easy" courses, I'm lucky in that currently I'm in a BASc program, so I can't take all the "science" courses that are intended for "non-science" students. Since my first degree was in engineering, those science courses for non-majors tend to be on the easy side for me. ;) There were also only a few people in my major who found our statistics class easy. I pulled off a 99 in the course, but most of my peers had a very hard time with the course. Of course, these are the same people who complained on a research methods midterm that we weren't allowed to use a calculator when the numbers involved were incredibly easy to mentally do the simple multiplication and division.

Posted
Go to a school where they don't curve at all?

 

I've never had my marks curved (even in the stupid machine language programming course where the entire class failed the midterm).

 

It's nice to go into a final exam knowing exactly what mark I need to get a 90, 95, etc. in the course. But it isn't that great when you have courses like the above-mentioned machine language programming course.

 

At least I've never had to "worry" about my standing in a course compared to my peers.

 

As for "easy" courses, I'm lucky in that currently I'm in a BASc program, so I can't take all the "science" courses that are intended for "non-science" students. Since my first degree was in engineering, those science courses for non-majors tend to be on the easy side for me. ;) There were also only a few people in my major who found our statistics class easy. I pulled off a 99 in the course, but most of my peers had a very hard time with the course. Of course, these are the same people who complained on a research methods midterm that we weren't allowed to use a calculator when the numbers involved were incredibly easy to mentally do the simple multiplication and division.

 

Doesn't always work that way. Here at Western I've never heard of anyone being curved down but if the average is too high they'll make the final harder to bring down the average a bit (happens in first and second year courses, first year physics average going into final was in the 80s so prof made a hard exam where class average was 38% or something like that. Then he curved it up to get the course average to 78% which was where he wanted it)

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