Unfair Grading in School

Imagine you are holding the winning Powerball ticket in your hand. You check and recheck your numbers and can't believe your eyes. Yes, you have the winning ticket. The prize is rightfully yours. Now imagine that winning ticket being snatched out of your hands. This is how many students have been left feeling thanks to the Purdue University Math Department. Meghan Tran, a freshman in Management, was in MA224 last semester. I spoke to her about the grading system and she said, "It's ridiculous. I got an A on every single exam, got A's on every assignment, and I still got a B in the class, just because someone had a few more points than me. I deserved an A but still got a B."

So what exactly is this "ridiculous" grading system, you ask? According to the Purdue Math Department's website, semester grades are figured as follows:

" There is a total of 550 points in the course. Homework and quizzes combined count 100 points. Each of the three mid-term exams counts 100 points, and the final exam counts 150 points. Since the only assessments common to all students and graded identically for all students are the two, course-wide exams (Exam 2 and the Final Exam), a normalization process based on them is used to determine the number of each letter grade given in a section. The Department decides on an A-range, B-range, C-range, etc., for the combined two exams. Each instructor then gives the same number of A's, B's, C's, etc., that his section earned on the combined exams. The assignment of the letter grades is based on students' total points (a number between 0 and 550). For example, if in a particular section there are 8 A's, 10 B's, etc., on the two combined exams, the 8 students with the highest total points receive an A, the next 10 a B, and so on."

This is where the problem lies. If a course is worth a total of 550 points, according to the standard 90, 80, 70 scale, an A would be anything above 495 points or a 90%. However, in this system, nothing is guaranteed. A student may earn 495, 500 or even 540 points and still not achieve an A in the class. For example, if a student has 500 points, and the department allots 4 A's for a particular section, the top 4 ranked students will get A's for the semester. If the top four students are exceptional and have grades all 495 and above, then the cutoff for letter grades is thrown off as now 500/550 a 91% becomes a B.