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One of my favorite finals had two parts. One was a normal test on the material. That was not graded on a curve.

The other was a more open ended set of problems. That was graded on a curve, and was a lot of fun.

But yeah, every other CS class I took was on a curve.

I recall certain intro CS courses being calibrated to be difficult enough to fit with the department’s (generally tough) grading guidelines without actually applying a strict curve to exam results after the fact, so as to encourage students to see it as a collaborative endeavor rather than a competitive one. That seems kind of ideal if you can make it work. But yes, it’s hardly unusual for grades to work a lot like stack ranking.

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