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Comment by s_baby | Hacker News Reader

The international students have unreasonably high standards for maintaining financial assistance and staying out of academic probation(3.5-3.8 at my university). By design college courses give work just a little beyond what a student can reasonably accomplish(with a "good" grade) and curve accordingly. These kids aren't just cheating they are marginalizing students who are honest or don't have this kind of social access. If you're not part of a fraterntiy/sorority that archives coursework/tests of previous students or part of an international student in-group then you can easily fall through the cracks from this grade deflation effect.

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>If you're not part of a fraterntiy/sorority that archives coursework/tests of previous students or part of an international student in-group then you can easily fall through the cracks from this grade deflation effect.

That is a huge problem for a lot of us more introverted types, especially if you're a transfer student from another school. I remember taking a bunch of classes where I didn't know anyone and had no one to discuss problems and solutions with. Organic chemistry, diff eq, among others, but pretty much all classes were like that. Having social anxiety issues made it very hard to work my way into the community. Meanwhile the other students had all been stuck together in the same program for years, the same dorms, the same fraternities, etc.

I'd come in and the entire rest of the class would be sitting around sharing their homework answers, copying each other on the ones they couldn't figure out, getting help from each other... Never had any access to it and I know I worked harder for lower grades (in some cases) just because I wasn't part of the in-group.

Even worse is when people with connections get interviews or jobs based solely on knowing people who can recommend them.

At least in programming we have GitHub/Twitter/meetups to help with that (worked great for me).

That's just personal/professional networking and you should consider working at it. I try to keep in touch with as many former co-workers as I can in case I find myself looking for something new or I can help out someone who is looking themselves.

That's my favorite opportunity: helping someone find a job when they need one.

Yeah I've done my fair share of networking as I mentioned. Just meant it's also a common complaint by introverted students.

It's called having a good reputation.

You do realize this is the best way to get a job? And also, commonly thought as the best way to find new high quality employees so that when your old colleagues boss

It's not some secret fraternity. All you need to do is to do a good job and not be an asshole, so that when your old colleagues boss asks, does he know any candidates for a new position he remembers to mention you.

In my experience the cheaters don't socialize outside their group at all. That's how it's so easy to tell the cheaters from the normal people! They won't. And if half your class is like that, well.. yeah :(

My take on it: There's no solutions manual for building stuff in real life lol.

> There's no solutions manual for building stuff in real life lol.

That is unless you are this guy:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/01/17/business/us-outsource-job-chin...

That really hurt when I was taking Discrete Math. Extremely challenging course, and I'd put in 10 hours a week on the homework and still have a few that I just couldn't figure out. Practically cried when I saw people copying answers just before class. Unusually for a university course, the homework was worth about 60% of the grade.

I saw a fair amount of cheating in college. It really sucked to be competing with people who had an easy way out that wasn't even available to me.

> I'd come in and the entire rest of the class would be sitting around sharing their homework answers, copying each other on the ones they couldn't figure out, getting help from each other...

This is actually one of the reasons I frequently avoided study groups for many of my math classes in college. There was too much of an emphasis on just getting the answers from each other, which meant you might get a decent score on the homework but not on the tests. What's worse, you wouldn't develop a true understanding for the material, which would hinder you in later and more advanced courses.

It was definitely a lot more work for me to labor through every problem myself, but I ended up at the top of almost every math class I took, and I really do believe that my avoidance of the study groups was part of this. They were just toxic to a degree. If I really hit a stumbling block and needed help, I'd go to the TA or the professor, who were always extremely helpful because it was obvious I'd put in real effort and wasn't just seeking a quick answer.

I will say that this approach backfired in one case -- a course on advanced integration theory with extremely difficult problem sets, no exams, a very old professor who was brilliant but not very good at all at interacting with or helping students (his lectures were quite bad too and his handwriting illegible), and an invisible, incredibly harsh grader who was not available for advice at all. Doing every problem myself was too much of a burden and I got my first and only B in a math class ever because I didn't join in on the study groups. A year later I met up with some students from that class who learned that I had done every problem myself, and they were collectively in shock and awe due to the length and difficulty of the problem sets.

That sounds like a bad experience with that study group. I found I wasn't really successful as an undergrad until I started to do problem sets with other students. It also really helped to explain problems to others - you don't really understand something until you can explain it to someone else.

I'm also introverted, but it was my choice not to take the easy way out. >90% of students in my classes cheated on everything - if there was no way to cheat, the world would end for these guys. It's hilarious when you see students sharing answers on an ethics exam!

Cheating may get you the degree and a good GPA, but you really won't learn that much. I for one came to university to learn as much as possible.

In the end, I graduated with first-class honors and had the highest GPA of my cohort. And even though I graduated from a no-name university in the Middle East, I'm going to start a PhD in Electrical Engineering at a top 10 school in the US this fall.

I like to think it's all thanks to doing things ethically rather than cheating my way through college, but perhaps I'm just lucky.

> I like to think it's all thanks to doing things ethically rather than cheating my way through college, but perhaps I'm just lucky.

No way, take credit for your hard work. Congrats.

Thanks man!

Yeah I feel there's a massive disconnect between class lectures, the book, the exam, and exam-specific student material.

Which is to be expected. Over time, students will optimise material for the exam. Whereas the lectures often discuss things that you ought to learn, but that isn't tested for mostly practical reasons (some knowledge is hard to test, or would make the exam too long).

I've recently sat in a uni statistics course, about 2 weeks in 80% of students stopped coming to class because the professor just had no ability to teach. 1 on 1 he's brilliant, in academic writing he's brilliant, but he's not a teacher. However, students set up a $60 2-day course, everyone who took it passed. At least that's formalised and open, sent to all students' email. But a lot of that nowadays happens through whatsapp. For example I just got a math guidebook, practise exams and some other helpful stuff sent to me on whatsapp from a maths study group I'm taking, all of which is 10x more helpful than the official book used in class or the lectures. But that's only because I got invited into the group by a friend.

I've also studied abroad multiple times and it's a world of difference without these connections. Mainly because exam difficulty has adjusted to students having 'prime' material allowing them to do well, meaning if you don't have it and just follow lectures or the prescribed materials, you're going to have a hard time even scoring above average when you put in tons of effort.

One terrible way that bad professors try to enforce students attending their class periods is by sprinkling in "clicker" quizzes into their lectures. These are little four-button devices that you have to buy/rent at exorbitant rates from the school IT department. One class that I took, informally known as "Stars for Stoners" aka Astronomy 101, based something like 10% of the total grade on these clicker questions. Naturally, people found ways to circumvent this kind of bullshit[1], at least for a while...

[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/01/08/dartmouth/GN8oL...

>I'd come in and the entire rest of the class would be sitting around sharing their homework answers, copying each other on the ones they couldn't figure out, getting help from each other...

And I'd say you are luckier that you didn't have access to this.

When I was in university, I did my own homework.[1]

I specifically didn't want any help from anyone because I wanted to see how I measured up against other students and the material.

I took chances with my answers. If the problem set included a hint, I tried using the hint privately, but then worked hard at finding a novel answer that didn't use the hint.

This, in my opinion is a real education. Education isn't something the school gives you, it's something you pursue yourself.

And BTW, my grades suffered as a result of this 'passion' for the material, but I don't believe my prospects after school did. If anything I think they were improved.

[1] I don't know what it is these days, with everyone doing their homework together. Is that a millennial thing? Perhaps high schools switched to over-emphasizing group work?

> These kids aren't just cheating they are marginalizing students who are honest or don't have this kind of social access

Sue the school [1]. There are firms that specialize in protecting people's rights in education [2]. Suing doesn't make you a bad person, and you don't even have to do the talking

[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/01/sport/ncaa-response-to-law...

[2] https://www.thefire.org/

+1 I saw this going on at my highly ranked university. After many B's, my self-esteem got a boost senior year when I finally took a newly required course with a new professor where there were no old tests to study and got an A.

Now imagine that B was a 60-80 post-curve and your financial assistance was tied to this number.

Maybe that's a sign that these people shouldn't be cheating to get into a school that they can't work their way out of. These aren't victims, they're cheaters taking spots from other people.

A 3.5 is easy. I got a a 3.82 at my school of engineering, while working, and commuting for about 4 hours per day. I didn't really even try that hard in school.

This comment doesn't really add anything to the discussion especially because colleges have different grading scales and culture of grade inflation or deflation. For example in mine most GPAs hovered around 3.5. A 3.8 would be rare.

Grade inflation is a problem for many state American universities, at least. Havard also is a private university where grade inflation has been highlighted as a real problem. See:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/...

I haven't heard of any universities recently where the problem is instead grade deflation, any links to share?

No, but in engineering the flunk-out rate is near 70%, or at least it was 25 years ago when I was a student. I don't think there is grade inflation going on there.

I only witnessed cheating twice; Chinese and Indians. In general though, the Asians worked their asses off; 1st generation immigrants "off the boat". Very tough competition.

Reed is a wonderful example of a school with almost no grade inflation. In the last 30 years only 11 students have had perfect GPAs.

See: https://www.reed.edu/registrar/pdfs/grades.pdf

I imagine it's a lot tougher if English is not your native language.

Your humble brag is not that humble. Try again.

It was easy for you, and that's great. Just because it was easy for you doesn't mean it would be easy for most people in the program.

Congrats, you're my first down vote. Seriously though, here you either add to the conversation or perish. Bragging about your GPA is not only childish, but completely irrelevant to prett much everything....in life.

I bet if you really tried, you could have shaved that commute down a little.~

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