It is the tail end of the semester at Cornell right now, and that means exam week. Obviously this doesn't affect me much, because I am no longer a student. I do still live in Ithaca for work, so I can see the effects exams are having on students. As I write this, I am thinking of my girlfriend in particular. At the moment she is working on a 10+ page research paper and studying for a biochemistry exam. Unfortunately for her, they are both due tomorrow. I can't prove it, but I bet frequently co-morbid classes are built to have their exams or final papers/projects close to each other at the end of the year to raise the bar just a little higher.
You hear people talk a lot about Cornell, saying it is an extremely competitive school, that there's no grade inflation, that everything is graded on a curve. Basically, that it is incredibly tough. Well, that's partially true. Partially. Here's the truth.
When you walk into a science class at Cornell, you are going to get exactly what you have been warned about. These classes are curved, and the median is usually a relatively poor letter grade - the kind that will keep you out of medical school. Some - but not all! - of the students are very competitive. The curve is the most sinister part, though. What you have to understand is that the other 500 people in the class that are setting the curve which you will be graded against are ridiculously smart. Not only that, but they are ridiculously hard working.
Another sinister part of these classes is the way the grades are constructed. One night during my freshman year, I was with a few friends in my dorm room watching movies and shooting the shit and etc. Our buddy from down the hall comes in and says, "I just failed my chemistry prelim, anyone want to go get high?" We all laughed until we saw the dead serious look on his face. "I'm serious, who wants to go get high?"
Turns out he didn't fail the test, or at least he didn't get a failing grade. He scored a 17/100. The average on the test was 21/100, giving him a solid C+. Not a good grade, but definitely not a terrible grade. Many of the science classes - particularly those related to chemistry - work just like that. This was a bit of an extreme example, but it was fairly normal for tests to be curved to a 30 or 40 percent grade as the average. You have to understand how odd this is. The average student in the class getting an average grade in the class does NOT even get HALF of the questions right on the test! To me this is mind boggling, and I have always wondered why they choose to structure the tests this way. If they built a test that was curved to a 70, they could still get the same grade spread (which they do successfully in Physics) while also testing them more fairly. I have to wonder, when the average student doesn't even get half the questions right, how much does a guessed answer or a little luck play in? The worst part, though, is the demoralization. It's going into a test having studied your life out for the past week knowing - yes, you know ahead of time - that you will have no idea what the hell you are looking at as you take that test, being reduced to the hope that you will simply get less wrong than the majority of your peers.
Many other classes, such as in the arts or social sciences, seem to work differently. I imagine I'm kicking the hornets nest a little bit with this post, implying that the science majors work harder and take harder classes, and I hate to think of a history major stumbling onto this blog and getting offended. Therefore, let me start with a disclaimer: I was a liberal arts major at Cornell. I only took the minimum science classes required for medical school, then a few more out of interest. The bulk of my classes were in the liberal arts. When I give these descriptions of how the classes work, I am simply telling you what I have observed from my time at school. Also, another side note to dissuade you from thinking I'm trying to make myself a martyr: as tough as the science classes are, the engineering classes are definitely more difficult. Hats off to the engineers.
Anyway, the liberal arts classes work differently. There's mostly two types. There are the larger lecture style courses, similar in size to the basic science courses, and the smaller discussion style courses. As in the sciences, the lecture style courses are graded on a curve, but here the curve is usually set much higher; think B+, A-, or even A. Yes. Some large liberal arts lecture classes at Cornell are curved to an A. Think Government or AEM (our undergrad business major). The discussion style classes are much smaller and allow you to legitimately build a relationship with your professor and fellow students. These classes aren't graded on a curve, but they typically have a high average grade (think A-). There are two ways to explain this. First, the discussion style classes are typically high level classes that only attract students who are interested in the subject and hard working related to it. Second, in these classes, you build a personal relationship with a professor, and I suspect it is much harder for them to give you a poor grade. If they know you, they have a face attached the the name they would be giving a C to.
I loved and love Cornell. I should be the poster boy for the school. I will sing its praises to anyone I meet. Although the above system may seem a little off, I have to say it worked out really well for me. I had a good balance. I took some incredibly challenging science classes that forced me to work hard and find out what I could do. I also took some relatively easy liberal arts classes where I could sit back and relax and focus on my own personal interest in the material. There is a certain balance in that, and I enjoyed it.
Back to my girlfriend, though. The poor girl is a science major. A real science major; not like me, a liberal arts major who gets to talk big because he took some science classes. And right now, she is getting crushed.
*Update, since I wrote this several days before posting it: poor girl had to study until 7 AM then woke up 4 hours later to keep going.
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