Much like many students, I came into the university with a good level of academic self-esteem and willingness to test out the pre-med track. It did not strike me that this was the majority of Stony Brook students and the university primarily focuses on STEM concentrations. Everyone jokes about how people in these fields rely on the curve and to a certain extent it is true. We’re not alone in facing the crushing competition from peers in every aspect of college life. From keeping a decent GPA, participating in extracurricular activities and hanging out with friends- it’s a balancing act. It doesn’t make it any easier the way many courses are set up in terms of assignments. Although not impossible because of curves, the tests are usually worth the bulk percentage of the final grade.
I had just accepted this, not thinking about the mental thought process this insinuated until a fellow member of a focus group brought it up. Her initially reserved stature shifted to a more assertive one to mirror her frustration. She vented how you’re basically counting on a bunch of students doing worse than you, so the curve ends up working in your favor. This made me reflect on all the occasions where I’ve resented certain students for scoring so high and messing up the curve. There were very few curved tests in my high school so my thought process experienced a shift from personal to public. The focus on my individual work ethic was out of the picture and I started to think, I just hope everyone else failed at this more than I did. It also makes me wonder if I’m really learning anything if a 50% actually ends up as a B- in a biology class. How does this justify my ability to use this information in the future if I am technically able to only understand 50% of it?
It took me a while to decide that I was not ready at this point to attend medical school. The brutal competition and change in work atmosphere had taken away my edge. My self-esteem faltered and I questioned my future if I were to actually apply for medical school. A lot of students praise the curve but agree that it gives them a false sense of security with the knowledge. This is especially true for people like myself who were on the latter end of the curve but maybe just passed. I found it discouraging to receive the scores I did and equate that with my future career success. Although the letter grades that matched up with the percentages were absolutely dismal. It’s also confusing because there isn’t a national standard for these curves. So, a student at another university could be doing just as well as I am but scoring in the A range, while I’m barely making a B- here. Think about it, your doctor who you trust your health with, could have averaged a 70% and passed a biology course at one point thanks to a curve.
This system validates a student’s ability to set a goal to be better than others rather than challenging himself/herself as an individual. It encourages individuals to be satisfied with work they could’ve put their full potential into and gotten more out of. If a person gets a 60 and the curve allows them to pass the course, there is definitely a possibility that he or she did not gain the information necessary for applying that in context. On the other hand, it brings to question the quality of the professors conveying the information. Students are being tested on information that hasn’t been properly taught or understood; yet they end up getting an overall good grade thanks to the curve. In reality they can’t apply that information and don’t understand it from a holistic standpoint. This process is favorable to universities in a corporate sense, I guess. However, it is so important to see this from the global or community perspective. The accomplishments that can be attained if individuals focused competed and against their own baseline are far more valuable. It also fosters an academic drive fueled by genuine curiosity rather than numerical scores and statistics. It’s a much-needed divide in a world where intellect is constantly correlated with a number. This definitely does not need to be the norm.