GRADING GUIDELINES FOR UNDERGRADUATE COURSES

New instructors in EECS classes have commented that they do not know
what grading policy exists in the department.  In some courses the
assigned grades show wide fluctuation from section to section, and/or
semester, depending on who teaches the section.  Furthermore, over the
last ten years, the lower and upper division EECS average GPA's have
inflated considerably.

The undergraduate study curriculum committee suggests that there should
be some uniformity in grading in fairness to our students, and we
propose the following guidelines, which were ratified at the faculty
meeting of March 11, 1976, and updated in 1989.

1. a) A typical GPA for courses in the lower division is 2.7.  This GPA
   would result, for example, from 17% A's, 20% B's, 10% D's, and 3%
   F's.  A class whose GPA falls outside the range 2.5 - 2.9 should be
   considered atypical. (A Typical GPA for basic prerequisite lower
   division CS courses (CS40, CS 41) is 2.5, with GPA's outside the
   range 2.3 - 2.7 considered atypical.)

   b) A typical GPA for courses in the upper division is 2.9. (This GPA
   would result, for example, from 23% A's, 50% B's, 20% C's, 5% D's,
   and 2% F's.) A class whose GPA falls outside the range 2.7 - 3.1
   should be considered atypical.  A typical GPA  for basic
   prerequisite upper division courses (EECS 104A, EECS 105, CS 150, CS
   153) is 2.7 with GPA's outside the range 2.5 - 2.9 considered
   atypical.

   These guidelines do not represent a major shift down from current
   GPA levels, but rather they are intended to prevent inflation.

2. Since some graduate students enroll in upper division undergraduate
   courses, care should be taken that their performance does not
   influence the grading of the undergraduate students.  The
   undergraduate students as a separate group should first be assigned
   grades according to the guidelines in 1(b) above.  Then the graduate
   students should be assigned grades using the same boundaries between
   grades as were used for the undergraduate population.  (This
   technique properly evaluates graduate students against an
   undergraduate norm in an undergraduate course without skewing
   the norm because of their presence. The two groups of grades should
   be re-combined for the course report.)

3. In addition, there has recently been some concern about inadequate
   preparation of some students for some courses.  The Undergraduate
   Study Committee was asked to make a preliminary recommendation to
   faculty regarding this problem.  The recommendation is as follows:

   The Undergraduate Study Committee does not believe that grading
   standards should be lowered even if a larger than usual fraction of
   students in a course appear to deserve low grades.