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Old 12-11-2006, 11:45 AM
Dave D Dave D is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Suffolk Law School or Brookline
Posts: 2,886
Default Re: Why do Universities and Colleges still use letter grades?

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As you advance into higher education you will learn that it makes more sence to place people into groups. A lot of grading is subjective and it makde more sence to have 5 groups (a lot of places just 4) than to have 100 different scores to hand out.

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Well unless they switch over to letter grades in Grad school (and they don't) this isn't true. I also really don't see the value in have 4 or 5 groups. I mean their is a huge difference between a 90 and a 97. How do you determine who the very best students are?

SUFan5,
85-90 is an A
90+ is an A+
I thought this was fairly standard.


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Definatly not. Standard is the following:

98-100 A+
97-93 A
90-92 A-

Same for Bs, Cs, etc

Again, if you were to start splintering by giving people a 93 at the end of the semester, then employers or whoever WILL start hiring people because someone has A POINT better than someone else. Getting a point better is the definition of subjectivity, so its better to give ranges.

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I understand the value for more subjective questions and papers however I don't see why the prof can't just mimic the letter system (i.e. only give out marks in multiples of 5), all the letter system really does is restrict the profs options.

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If he mimics the letter system, it's by definition the same thing right?
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