{"id":19636,"date":"2017-03-08T08:15:52","date_gmt":"2017-03-08T13:15:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/edc\/?p=19636"},"modified":"2026-05-06T13:28:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T17:28:00","slug":"blog-whats-an-a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2017\/blog-whats-an-a\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog: What&#8217;s an A+?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section class=\"w-screen px-6 cu-section cu-section--white ml-offset-center md:px-8 lg:px-14\">\n    <div class=\"space-y-6 cu-max-w-child-5xl  md:space-y-10 cu-prose-first-last\">\n\n            <div class=\"cu-textmedia flex flex-col lg:flex-row mx-auto gap-6 md:gap-10 my-6 md:my-12 first:mt-0 max-w-5xl\">\n        <div class=\"justify-start cu-textmedia-content cu-prose-first-last\" style=\"flex: 0 0 100%;\">\n            <header class=\"font-light prose-xl cu-pageheader md:prose-2xl cu-component-updated cu-prose-first-last\">\n                                    <h1 class=\"cu-prose-first-last font-semibold !mt-2 mb-4 md:mb-6 relative after:absolute after:h-px after:bottom-0 after:bg-cu-red after:left-px text-3xl md:text-4xl lg:text-5xl lg:leading-[3.5rem] pb-5 after:w-10 text-cu-black-700 not-prose\">\n                        Blog: What&#8217;s an A+?\n                    <\/h1>\n                \n                                \n                            <\/header>\n\n                    <\/div>\n\n            <\/div>\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n<p><em>By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About 10 years ago during a lunch conversation that drifted into a discussion on student grades, a colleague asked, &#8220;What is an A+?&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The question was of course rhetorical.&nbsp;My colleague simply used it to point out the deficiency of the letter-grade system when it comes to distinguishing top students. I was used to a numeric-grade system as a student.&nbsp;When I first joined Carleton, I did find it surprising that only letter grades appeared in the transcripts for courses in STEM disciplines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At Carleton, as well as at many other universities, A+ covers a 10-point range, whereas B+, C+, or D+ covers at most half that range.&nbsp;From my experience, there is often a notable difference between students at the top of the A+ range and those at the bottom. However, it is difficult to say the same for students in the D+ range, for example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For the A+ grade to make sense, it must be a grade that is incredibly difficult to obtain. Otherwise, collapsing a 10-point range into one single grade could make judging a student&#8217;s academic ability from the transcript difficult.&nbsp;A <a href=\"http:\/\/charlatan.ca\/2010\/09\/carletons-grading-system-fail\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">piece in <em>The Charlatan<\/em><\/a> some years ago also described the impact of Carleton\u2019s letter-grade system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One might argue that students in the A+ range are all academic high-achievers and so there is little need to differentiate between them. Such an argument, unfortunately, does not seem to be supported by evidence.&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/neoacademic.com\/2011\/10\/05\/gladwell-was-wrong-high-and-very-high-ability-employees-perform-differently\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Studies have shown<\/a> that there is a difference in performance between employees with high ability and those with very high ability. A <a href=\"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/smpy\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">massive longitudinal study<\/a> on mathematically precocious youth <a href=\"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/smpy\/files\/2013\/01\/DoingPsychScience2006.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">showed<\/a> that intelligence test scores within the top one per cent were still strong predictors of later creative accomplishments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A mark of 100 is very far from a mark of 90. A letter-grade system that reflects this reality would be quite desirable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Kevin Cheung, Associate Professor, School of Mathematics and Statistics About 10 years ago during a lunch conversation that drifted into a discussion on student grades, a colleague asked, &#8220;What is an A+?&#8221; The question was of course rhetorical.&nbsp;My colleague simply used it to point out the deficiency of the letter-grade system when it comes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"acf":{"cu_post_thumbnail":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40209,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19636\/revisions\/40209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}