Negative Marks or How the School System Kicked me in the Nuts

[nifedj]

Penalising people for leaving the question blank pretty clearly defeats the point of using negative marking to cancel out guessing.

With regards to differing pass marks, it seem pretty clear that someone who gets a 60% at one university could get a 50% or a 70% at another and the grades are awarded accordingly. At my university 40% is a pass, 50% a C, 60% a B, 70% an A. According to the uni's webpage on grading and how it works with foreign exchange students, a grade A or A+ student from the US would be a grade A student here, a grade A- or B+ student from the US would be a grade B here etc. So the systems are pretty similar in terms of actual ability required to pass, they just differ in terms of how the exams are set up. Otherwise my university with its 40% pass mark would be nowhere near as high in the rankings as it is.

 

[fenrizz]

Spoiler

You think that's bad:

at one of my colleges we were on a forced curve of 2.7. In a typical class, as an example, there'd be one slot for an A+. Highest grade would get it.

If you did almost as well, stellar even, but not quite as good as the person ahead of you, no matter how great your paper or exam results, you did not get an A+ as the 'slot' was used up by the person ahead of you. No A+ for second place.

If there was an A+, and there always was, then the lowest grade got an F - no matter how good their performance. If you did well, but were comparatively the worst in the class, you got an F. This was graduate level, so even the worst of us at least did well. I saw some smart people flunk.

F did not mean you didn't know the subject at all, like it does in most circles - it just meant that your classmates all knew it better.

Very competitive system. 275 (roughly) started the journey w/me to get this degree, and just over a hundred didn't make it to graduate alongside me. Round-about 1/3 got weeded out, and this was pretty typical. They didn't all fall off due to being weeded out though, some few left due to real life problems and such.

One advantage of such a system, however, is that it was really easy to figure out your relative standing in your class, even before seeing an exact figure. Prospective employers would even some times ask graduates for this info and consider it when judging you (that is to say, rather than asking you 'what were your grades', you'd often be asked 'what was your class ranking').

There are variations on the forced curve system, mind you, and ours wasn't done exactly like other schools, but pretty close. (I think many just say that if you give a grade below the median, you have to give one above it, rather than 1 A grade forces you to give 1 F, like we did. But I can't say for certain as this was the only school I ever attended w/a forced curve. Plus, we'd limit the # of the extreme grades in advance - * at most there will be 1 A+ * being typical. So it was guaranteed in every class, in advance, that 1 person would get top spot, and 1 person would fail.

Wow.. just wow...
That is a extremely harsh system to use.

So even if you deliver an A paper you still run the risk of failing the course?
That's just wrong, and possibly evil.

I'm almost rendered speechless.