Poll of the Day > There's no difference between a "C" and an "A" in school.

(+) Yeah! (+)

This applies to standardized testing and actual performance.
There was a news segment kids being "behind" because of COVID and whatever nonsense. I made me remember how utterly pointless most of grade school and even university was in retrospect. Grades are truly meaningless.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-vitamin-d/art-20363792

C's get degrees

Grading on a scale where A is the best kid in class and F is the worst, is yes.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Like 15 years why?
It was on the television. I gave a good explanation - it was on the news.

Ehh, it matters to some extent. In the sense that your cumulative GPA can affect your ability to get into college, potentially limit you to certain fields, or affect your ability to apply for certain financial aid.

I knew someone in high school who literally couldn't get into his college of choice because he got a C in one class instead of an A. They tentatively accepted him but then basically gave him two semesters to pull his grade in math up, and he couldn't do it because that was around the time he was starting to turn into an alcoholic, so they cancelled his admission.

And I know I was basically offered a $1000 grant per semester without even applying simply because I scored over 1300 on my SATs. But I think there were other grant offers on the table that required you to have a specific GPA or be in a specific top % of your class.

well, shouldn't it matter to _you_? you're talking about the social consequences, but someone getting Cs is demonstratively less skilled/knowledgeable/capable than someone getting As. things will only get more difficult too, so if you're getting Cs now who knows if you'll still be getting Cs later.

School in America sounds really complicated.

I got Ds and Cs in highschool, when on to college to graduate with honors. I think the possibility that maybe schools just are bad environments for learning for some people should be considered. Going to college having passionate instructors teaching and helping made all the difference.

As get the baes

Sahuagin posted...

well, shouldn't it matter to _you_? you're talking about the social consequences, but someone getting Cs is demonstratively less skilled/knowledgeable/capable than someone getting As. things will only get more difficult too, so if you're getting Cs now who knows if you'll still be getting Cs later.

not true some c students just choose to not do every single homework assignment while getting As on every test they understand the material and choose to not care about a grade based on what they deem is unnecessary work many of those same people enter the workforce better prepared to work effectively efficiently competently and confidently

This is my personal grading scale:

D- or below: Total fail
D, D+ : Big time fail - not pass
C- : Big time fail - pass
C, C+, B- : Fail
B, B+ : Part-time fail
A- : Bad grade
A, A+ : Fine

People have asked why C would be fail if it's average. That's because a C does not get you anywhere. Colleges and many grad or professional schools will reject you for getting C's. Even B's are risking it.

fishy071 posted...

This is my personal grading scale:

D- or below: Total fail
D, D+ : Big time fail - not pass
C- : Big time fail - pass
C, C+, B- : Fail
B, B+ : Part-time fail
A- : Bad grade
A, A+ : Fine

People have asked why C would be fail if it's average. That's because a C does not get you anywhere. Colleges and many grad or professional schools will reject you for getting C's. Even B's are risking it.

I've never shown a single transcript to a potential employer and I would never work for one that required it.

fishy071 posted...

People have asked why C would be fail if it's average. That's because a C does not get you anywhere. Colleges and many grad or professional schools will reject you for getting C's. Even B's are risking it.

I graduated college with a 2.3 GPA. I am a Software Architect. What does that say about me?

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Ehh, it matters to some extent. In the sense that your cumulative GPA can affect your ability to get into college, potentially limit you to certain fields, or affect your ability to apply for certain financial aid.

Yep, this exactly. Grades matter for as long as you're still in the school system. Good grades will get you access to scholarships and better programs in post-secondary. Good grades in post-secondary get you access to research positions and/or grad school/post-grad programs, if that's where your interests like.

That said, I agree that once you're out of school your grades largely don't matter. I work at one of the largest engineering firms in the country, I've sat on hiring panels, and not once have I ever seen an interviewer who cared about a transcript (myself included). As long as you passed and got the piece of paper with the fancy initials on it, that's good enough.

shadowsword87 posted...

https://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements-vitamin-d/art-20363792

there is no reason to go outside

Cruciferous posted...

I've never shown a single transcript to a potential employer and I would never work for one that required it.

Judgmenl posted...

I graduated college with a 2.3 GPA. I am a Software Architect. What does that say about me?

Many jobs don't look at your grades. However, I am talking more about academics, especially higher education. Colleges look at your high school grades, and grad and professional schools look at your college grades. Furthermore, I said it was my personal grading scale, which is meant for me only. I don't apply it to other people. School can be hard, and not everyone can get high GPAs. However, I am upset if I don't get straight A's. I guess it's partly because my parents hammered that into me.

fishy071 posted...

School can be hard

School is not hard, it's pointless/boring. The most important class that pertains to what I do day to day (Operating systems) I slept through because the content was boring and ended up getting a C in. At the time I was a bit of an ass and one point the professor made a mistake when speaking (his information was a few years out of date with modern CPU design), I corrected him and the next class he added more content about what I had pointed out to his lecture. That professor was great (gave me a recommendation to my first job) but that didn't stop me from sleeping through every one of his classes (frequently being in the front row) because I worked 30 hours a week while taking 20 credit hours per semester.

the difficulty of school varies widely depending on your discipline
I was a math major up until we started getting into the deep shit of "everything we taught you about calculus was actually a convenient lie, here's the theory on how we justify that it works" and I just didn't understand it on a fundamental level
still passed the course and probably should have stuck with it but it was easier to sleep through a CS degree
also as someone whose job in the past has been to interpret the contractual language of endowed scholarships, your HS GPA absolute matters to *some* people, potentially those with lot of expendable cash to throw at college students

I was a straight C student in highschool, and I still got into college (community college for 2 years first) and graduated with a 3.5 GPA. American highschool is just a shit environment for learning really.

Judgmenl posted...

School is not hard, it's pointless/boring.

It 100% can be ball-bustingly hard; it depends entirely on your major and what classes you're taking.

I'm an engineer, and to this day I have never had to work as hard before or since as I did when I was getting my degree. The sheer volume of work thrown at you in some of the courses was nightmarish and it was difficult material to boot. And it's not like the students aren't bright; the mean high school average of students the year I went into university was 89%; we had several dozen valedictorians in the freshman batch of ~700 first year students; yet roughly a third of those students didn't make it to second year. My average in my Grade 12 year was 97% and yet I absolutely struggled at points during undergrad. I still made it through and my grades were solid, but I was definitely not a straight-A student anymore.

Will you have this experience if you take an easier degree? No, probably not. But to simply give a blanket statement that "school isn't hard, it's pointless/boring" is wrong (on both counts - I found a lot of the material extremely interesting, moreso than 95% of what we covered in high school, and it was absolutely relevant for my work).

darkknight109 posted...

It 100% can be ball-bustingly hard; it depends entirely on your major and what classes you're taking.

I'm an engineer, and to this day I have never had to work as hard before or since as I did when I was getting my degree. The sheer volume of work thrown at you in some of the courses was nightmarish and it was difficult material to boot. And it's not like the students aren't bright; the mean high school average of students the year I went into university was 89%; we had several dozen valedictorians in the freshman batch of ~700 first year students; yet roughly a third of those students didn't make it to second year. My average in my Grade 12 year was 97% and yet I absolutely struggled at points during undergrad. I still made it through and my grades were solid, but I was definitely not a straight-A student anymore.

Will you have this experience if you take an easier degree? No, probably not. But to simply give a blanket statement that "school isn't hard, it's pointless/boring" is wrong (on both counts - I found a lot of the material extremely interesting, moreso than 95% of what we covered in high school, and it was absolutely relevant for my work).

That more goes to my point that High School is a crappy environment for learning. The 2 biggest things that you need to learn for college (and life, really) that grade school doesn't teach you is independence, and time management. I am willing to bet all of those kids with "A"s and "B"s probably had parents and teachers breathing down their neck telling them how and when to study so they can get good grades. Now take that away suddenly and add a whole bunch of other distractions. Most people aren't going to know what to do and likely drop out the 1st or 2nd year, as evidenced by the fact that 40% of people who start an undergraduate degree don't finish it.

Oddly enough, that number actually drops significantly for homeschooling. Probably because a good homeschooling environment actually teaches you those things.

I'm not going to defend high school, because it is pretty shit at doing what it's supposed to do (though I think it has more to do with the fact that we're educating to the lowest common denominator and using an Industrial Revolution-era approach to learning, which is now almost two centuries out of date, despite the fact that better methods are available). However...

Dikitain posted...

I am willing to bet all of those kids with "A"s and "B"s probably had parents and teachers breathing down their neck telling them how and when to study so they can get good grades.

I can only speak for myself on this one, but no, I didn't have parents and teachers breathing down my neck telling me how and when to study, because that would imply that I studied. I did almost no studying in high school (or any other part of grade school), because I didn't need to - I was smart enough that it was unnecessary. There were many times where I would wander into class first thing in the morning and notice everyone was very quiet and poring over their notes, only to remember, "Oh, right! There's a test today, isn't there?". I would then proceed to ace it and get one of the top marks in the class despite not studying.

Talk to most former high-school high-achievers and they'll tell you much the same. And it *really* does not set you up for success come university, because there studying is absolutely necessary and most of the smart kids never figured out how to do it effectively, because they never had to (and I include myself in that description).

Dikitain posted...

Oddly enough, that number actually drops significantly for homeschooling. Probably because a good homeschooling environment actually teaches you those things.

You could say the same about non-home schooling environments, though. A good school will have much better results than a bad school, and that is true regardless of whether the school in question is home schooling, a public school, or a private school.