What is the point of getting into a prestige college if you're to
o stupid to do the work? If you want to party at USuCk, then go party. Don't take away a spot from someone who deserves to be there.....

Sometimes stupid parents raise stupid kids. Money is not a safeguard against stupidity.

Why don't just follow mom's steps and marry some rich dude.....

joe amos yaks said:

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"Are these kids that stupid or just the parents?"

Both. The parents are culpable; the kids claim deniability.

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And it's a fine way for these lower echelon millionaires to spend their money instead of bribing 5-star football players to go to their school..

https://www.tvguide.com/news/rob-lowe-mental-samurai-premiere-clip-exclusive/?fbclid=IwAR0QyVZe4hsFiHgI3UAjbOXYYUTqjAqxGg85-qScl_DuCkBKItgZ_AZZ4FU

The Moral Wages of the College Admissions Mania


https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/college-admissions-scandal.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share

As scholar athlete Forrest Gump said, "stupid is as stupid does."

GivemTheAxe said:

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At Stanfurd once you are admitted the grading system prevents you from flunking out. No grades lower than a C. In some classes no grades lower than a B. A student can drop a class up to the day of the exams.

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The drop deadline at Stanford is the 3rd week of the 11-week quarter.

There are also D and NC grades that remain on your transcript.

It was true at one time but it changed almost 30 years ago.

cctop said:

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GivemTheAxe said:

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At Stanfurd once you are admitted the grading system prevents you from flunking out. No grades lower than a C. In some classes no grades lower than a B. A student can drop a class up to the day of the exams.

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The drop deadline at Stanford is the 3rd week of the 11-week quarter.

There are also D and NC grades that remain on your transcript.

It was true at one time but it changed almost 30 years ago.

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Well you can withdraw from a class by the 8th week of any quarter. There are about 10 weeks in each quarter.

https://registrar.stanford.edu/students/enrolling-courses/course-withdrawal-deadline

That's pretty generous and sounds close to what GivemTheAxe was alluding to. He exaggerated it a bit, but there's definitely an institutional out to avoid a low grade or NC on a transcript only 1-2 weeks before the exam.

At furd, fall quarter 2018 started 9/24/18, withdrawal deadline was 11/16/18, quarter ended 12/3/18.

Another thing Stanfurd students used to be able to do there was change a class that was being taken for a grade, to credit/no credit. This was also possible until very late in the quarter (I believe it used to be right up to the final).

Dunno what the current policy is. Maybe like dropping a class, the deadline was moved up to the eighth week? Wow, they're getting tough!

Withdrawing from a class at Cal was a major hassle. Had to be done by half way point, hard deadline, no exceptions...except for one: freezing a class, which was another animal and basically a mulligan but you only got two and it was a hassle, and not commonly known.

Prof had to sign off, dean of college had to sign off. Had to meet with both and explain, separately. Stern warning, minor brow beating. I did it once. My excuse, allergic reaction to medication, two weeks in the hospital. I guess I had a reasonable excuse to I was told about the freeze. Never heard of it before that. No doubt it was discouraged.

Students are now allowed one late drop after the deadline (aka you can drop whenever you want before the end of the semester) no questions asked. Once you use up the one drop, you're out of options in the future.

packawana said:

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Students are now allowed one late drop after the deadline (aka you can drop whenever you want before the end of the semester) no questions asked. Once you use up the one drop, you're out of options in the future.

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I still have dreams of a class that I accidentally signed up for and never attended class and now I have to figure out how not to fail it.

packawana said:

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Students are now allowed one late drop after the deadline (aka you can drop whenever you want before the end of the semester) no questions asked. Once you use up the one drop, you're out of options in the future.

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Like, one your entire time at Cal?

I believe you used to be able to go P/NP after you found out your grade, but I haven't tried to verify it.

I also read somewhere (and have tried to find recently but I gave up) that in 50% of classes at furd, 70% of the students get an A. Might sound crazy to you but the average GPA is something like a 3.68 at furd now, so let's be honest no one is getting D's.

Yogi Bear said:

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packawana said:

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Students are now allowed one late drop after the deadline (aka you can drop whenever you want before the end of the semester) no questions asked. Once you use up the one drop, you're out of options in the future.

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I still have dreams of a class that I accidentally signed up for and never attended class and now I have to figure out how not to fail it.

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You, too? I've also had that dream more often than I'd like.

socaliganbear said:

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packawana said:

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Students are now allowed one late drop after the deadline (aka you can drop whenever you want before the end of the semester) no questions asked. Once you use up the one drop, you're out of options in the future.

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Like, one your entire time at Cal?

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Yes. At least if you're in the College of Letters and Science. I don't think the policy carries if you're a student of the other colleges, but I could be wrong - they might just have a different version of the rule.

Unit2Sucks said:

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I believe you used to be able to go P/NP after you found out your grade, but I haven't tried to verify it.

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An instructor can agree to give you a P/NP grade if you're facing a hardship or some other circumstance can occur but only the instructor has that power. Usually instructors offer to give an Incomplete with the requirement that the student catch up on the missing coursework by the next year (usually right before the first day of the following year's spring semester). Otherwise the grade defaults to an F.

GoBears635 said:

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Yogi Bear said:

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packawana said:

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Students are now allowed one late drop after the deadline (aka you can drop whenever you want before the end of the semester) no questions asked. Once you use up the one drop, you're out of options in the future.

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I still have dreams of a class that I accidentally signed up for and never attended class and now I have to figure out how not to fail it.

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You, too? I've also had that dream more often than I'd like.

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In my dream, I couldn't find the room where the final was being held. I even had one where I was writing in a blue book, and the pencil lead kept breaking, and breaking and.... I had those kinds of academic anxiety dreams into my 40s, then they faded away. Weirdly, I have never had a law practice anxiety dream. Go figure.

But school anxiety dreams? They're a thing:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/youre-at-the-final-exam-and-never-attended-class-its-that-dream-again/2016/09/19/01255a6c-792f-11e6-beac-57a4a412e93a_story.html?utm_term=.e20da571ebc5

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/radical-teaching/200909/recurring-final-exam-dream

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1994-11-07-9411070002-story.html

In the interest of facts:

Stanford deadlines:

• Add/drop a class until the third week of the quarter
• Change from letter grade to P/NP or vice versa until the eigth week of the quarter
• Withdraw from a class with a W noted on your permanent transcript until the eighth week of the quarter

Cal deadlines:

• Add/drop a class until the fourth week of the semester
• Change from letter grade to P/NP or vice versa until the tenth week of the semester
• Withdraw with a W noted on your permanent transcript until the end of Dead Week/RRR period
• In addition, L&S students can add/drop/change units/change grade options until the start of Dead Week/RRR period for up to two classes once in their time at Cal.

I'd call that a wash. Stanford students can withdraw from individual classes while I believe Cal students have to withdraw from all of them, but that later withdraw deadline and the one-time mulligan given to L&S students at Cal are pretty powerful.

Stanford average GPA:
The most recent data I could find for Stanford was from 2015, with a self-reported undergraduate mean GPA of 3.57:
https://thelittledataset.com/2015/07/31/eduanalytics-101/

Cal average GPA:
Cal publishes their GPA average broken out by major here:
https://pages.github.berkeley.edu/OPA/our-berkeley/gpa-by-major.html
In 2017-18, GPA averages per major ranged from 2.92 to 3.7, with the two most popular majors (CS and Econ) having an average GPA of 3.42 and 3.48 respectively. Those two majors made up about 1/6 of the graduating class.

There's a slight skew upwards for Stanford because they calculate GPA using a value of 4.3 for an A+ while Cal counts it as 4.

I would conclude that there is slightly more grade inflation at Stanford, but Cal is not as far behind as the posters in this thread would like to believe, and the urban legend that only 17% of Cal students get an A simply isn't borne out by the math.

oski003 said:

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Semesters are 50% longer than quarters. Implying that students at Cal have longer to change things is misleading and outright stupid. Also, there is a huge difference between having to withdrawal entirely for an academic term versus withdrawing from a class.

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I'm not implying anything. I'm stating directly that I think the deadlines are more or less the same.

If you are trying to argue that the Cal calendar is much more strict because students have to add/drop classes by the 4th week instead of having 4.5 weeks to do it, or they have to withdraw by the 10th week instead of the 12th week -- we will have to agree to disagree how significant that is.

And really the whole topic of withdrawals is overblown. At both schools it's noted on your permanent transcript. It's uncommon and it's there for emergencies. By the add/drop deadline you usually have a pretty good idea how well you're going to do in the class. Frankly, I'd rather have a one-time "get out of jail free" pass like Cal gives rather than having the ability to withdraw from individual classes past the drop deadline.

The whole reason we're having this conversation is that back in the touchy-feely 1970s, Stanford did try out a lenient grading system that didn't have F's and had late drop deadlines.

But the school changed it back to a normal system in 1995. (In an earlier post I said it was about 30 years ago. My memory was faulty, and math is hard.) At this point it hasn't been true within the lifetime of the current undergrads.

Yeah, those dreams are really common. It's your subconscious speaking to you about its fears and anxieties. In the case of the academic dreams, it's usually referring to a fear that you are not properly prepared or need to pay more attention to something (often work related, although can be something like completing your tax return that you have been procrastinating about). Remember, having dreams is healthy and as long as you don't completely ignore what your subconscious is trying to tell you it's no different than contemplation - you're just doing it with a part of your brain that you don't usually communicate directly with.

The deadline to withdraw from a class at Berkeley is the second week of the semester. You can only withdraw from a class one semester in your entire academic career after the second week of instruction.

As for changing from a grade to pass not pass, stanfurd allows is at the end of 8 of 11 weeks. Berkeley allows it at the end of 10 of 19 weeks.

At stanfurd, you are 73% of the way through the semester.
At Cal, you are 52% of the way through the semester.

For anybody whose brain hasn't been dumbed down by a furd "education," that is a significant difference.

----->https://dailytrojan.com/2019/03/18/editorial-board-scandal-after-scandal-usc-fails-to-hold-itself-accountable/

oski003 said:

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The deadline to withdraw from a class at Berkeley is the second week of the semester. You can only withdraw from a class one semester in your entire academic career after the second week of instruction.

As for changing from a grade to pass not pass, stanfurd allows is at the end of 8 of 11 weeks. Berkeley allows it at the end of 10 of 19 weeks.

At stanfurd, you are 73% of the way through the semester.
At Cal, you are 52% of the way through the semester.

For anybody whose brain hasn't been dumbed down by a furd "education," that is a significant difference.

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Since it's only you & me keeping this going, this will be my last post on the subject.

You're welcome to PM me if you'd like to discuss it further.

Per Berkeley's academic calendar for Spring 2019 for L&S:

https://ls.berkeley.edu/advising/tools-forms/ls-deadline-dates

the deadline to drop a class (note the difference between dropping and withdrawing) is the 4th week of the semester. A short list of popular classes are limited to the 2nd week. I'd note that this deadline was only recently moved up from the 5th week.

According to that same page the semester is 15 weeks long, not 19. April 5 is the 10th week of instruction, and the last day of Dead Week/RRR period (which is what Berkeley considers the last day of instruction) is 5 weeks later on May 10. The deadlines to change from a letter grade to P/NP, or the reverse, are more similar than you state.

Berkeley gives its students one opportunity to drop classes after the 4th week of the semester, consequence-free. Stanford doesn't allow that, but it does let students withdraw from an individual class at the cost of a permanent W on the transcript.

Again, I feel like this is all missing the point. I wouldn't argue with you saying that Stanford students are more coddled than Berkeley students. (From the opposite point of view, you would say that Berkeley gives its students less support.)

But I will argue about the facts used to support that opinion. Popular falsehoods about add/drop deadlines, grade change deadlines, and withdrawal deadlines based on decades-old misinformation don't support it. And as I posted earlier, while the numbers do show more grade inflation at Stanford, the average GPA at Berkeley is not so much lower as to be proof of it either.

cctop - when did you graduate from Stanford?

The Daily Cal wrote an interesting blog post about perceived "grade deflation" at Cal. Ironically, given the title, it actually confirmed grade inflation over the decades, but it doesn't jive with the numbers you are saying. Doesn't mean your data is wrong, just perhaps you assume too much by extrapolating from the 2 most popular majors in the L&S college, both of which require good GPAs in order to be admitted to the majors.

The chart attached shows a pretty steep grade inflation starting after an inflection point in the mid 80's. If this is accurate it still shows a pretty big gap between the two colleges although it's possible it's narrowed since then. I think that these charts undervalue grade inflation to be honest because it's not really linear. A 3.3 average GPA vs a 3.65 means basically that a school is giving 2x as many grades below an A (bec it's 2x the delta from 4.0).

The other interesting thing it points out is that different departments at Cal have different policies. I'm not sure if that's the case at Stanford or not, but seems like that would be pretty tough to be true given that the average GPA is closing in on an A-.

Spring semester is shorter than the Fall, we can split the difference at 17. Being able to drop a class consequence free one semester during your entire time at Cal is really not that significant. Otherwise, you have to drop 2nd week for Letters & Science, which I was looking up. At Taco Bell, you can drop up to end of 8 out of 11 weeks. You can change grades later too.