Skip to main content

Table 3 Comparisons of grade offsets of gateway STEM courses (“Offset”) with the weighted average grade point penalty of that department (“Dept. Average Offset”)

From: STEM courses are harder: evaluating inter-course grading disparities with a calibrated GPA model

Department

Gateway

n

Offset

Dept. Average Offset

rGPA

Chemistry

Chemistry 1

22,356

− 0.62

− 0.20

0.73

Mathematics

Calculus 1a

8464

− 0.47

− 0.47

0.65

Mathematics

Calculus 1b

8137

− 0.27

− 0.47

0.66

Molec. and Cell. Bio

Biology 1

10,201

− 0.40

− 0.36

0.78

Physics

Physics 1

17,329

− 0.40

− 0.46

0.72

  1. In all cases, the Standard Error of the Mean is equal or less than 0.01 of a grade point. Note that there are two first courses in calculus 1 (“Calculus 1a” is MATH 220, for those who have not been exposed to calculus previously, and “Calculus 1b” is MATH 221, for those who have). Chemistry 1 has the rubric CHEM 102, Physics 1 has PHYS 211, and Biology 1 has MCB 150 at the institution. We write “rGPA” for the correlation coefficient r between a student’s grade in the gateway course listed and their calibrated GPA