Grades at Exeter: Questions Answered

As the end of the year approaches, so does students’ last minute scramble to bump up their final grades for the spring term. Exonians begin to debate the difficulty of their teachers and classes, and how hard it is to get a certain grade in a certain course.Although students’ opinions range, faculty from the history and math department have recently told The Exonian that the average grade in the math department is a high 8 (on Exeter’s 11-point grading scale--the equivalent of a B), and the average grade in the history department is between a B and a B+.Although the Academy uses an 11-point scale grade point average scale to evaluate the academic performance of students, grading policies differ by subjects and departments. Instructors have the freedom to choose their method of grading, and are not restricted by any predetermined protocol, which often results in uneven grading patterns.History instructor Michael Golay said that now there is no uniform guideline for teachers to follow, in contrast to in previous years ago. “When I first came here, the standard was that class participation was 20 percent, and written work was 80 percent,” Golay said. “That can create some inconsistencies from teacher to teacher, I would assume.”Many teachers also noted an overall upward trend in average grades over the years. “Grades are a lot higher today than they were 25 years ago. A is the top grade today just like it was 25 years ago. Things have been compressed up near the top now and almost all the grades are in the B to A range,” mathematics department chair Eric Bergofsky said. “The [winter] midterm this year there were about 10 grades below a C. There is a relatively small percentage of C’s these days so the majority of the grades are B- and above and a good chunk at the A and A- range.”Bergofsky suggested that the perceived inflation may be due to a more competitive college process. “I think today if a student gets a C or a C+ [at] a crucial time in their career at Exeter it probably would hurt their chances to get into some of the selective colleges, so we have become much more sensitive to that.” he said.Golay, too, said that most grades are higher than they were when he came to the Academy nearly fifteen years ago. “I think that grades have inflated over time, but I don’t think it’s outrageous and I don’t think that the inflation has been very great over the past 15 years or so that I’ve been here,” he said.Karen Geary, mathematics instructor and Dean of Academic Affairs, said that in the math department, a majority of the faculty members utilize the set guidelines created by the department, which creates a more unified grading system compared to those of other departments.“Traditionally, the math department has used a rubric where the grade goes down every five percent for each letter grade,” Geary said.Golay said that while students should have clear explanations from teachers of their grading processes, students should be able to acclimate to each teachers’ class.“Every teacher is different, and as long as they tell their students what the expectations are, change is to be expected,” Golay said.Bergofsky shared that the majority of teachers in each department also share grades with one another to maintain consistency in the grades students are receiving within the department. He noted that many departments keep a tab for each student and perform checks each term to keep track of major changes in students’ grades for that department.“If the student, for instance, has been an A or A- student most of their career and all of the sudden is earning a C then one would want to look into that and figure out if the student is encountering particular difficulty this term for other reasons,” Bergofsky said.Additionally, the heads of each department receive a report on grades at the end of each term, including teacher, class, and department-wide averages.Searching for consistency throughout a department can sometimes prove challenging due to the variation of classes, teachers, and assignments. Science instructor Bradford Robinson explained some of the problems physics teachers have encountered while examining their grades for patterns.“In years past, the physics teachers have toyed with the idea of comparing graded material like lab reports, but that’s very hard to do,” Robinson explained. “I don’t know if we shy away from it because there’s an inherent inconsistency that’s difficult for us to come to terms with, or if our labs all serve a different purpose and cannot be fairly compared.”