Web sites offer grade distribution figures

Before entering a class, many students go the extra mile to find out how hard that class will be – by frequenting RateMyProfessor.com, plaguing roommates and friends with questions about past reading assignments and even rearranging schedules to get the easiest classes that start after 1 p.m.

But there is an easier way to predict a grade in next semester’s class.

Campusbuddy.com is a site, launched in October, that offers more than 80 million official university grades at hundreds of campuses nationwide. It has the most up-to-date and accessible collection of grade distributions anywhere.

But what many students don’t know is that IU also has a Web site similar to Campusbuddy. Students can go on the Web site to look at the grade distributions of classes by professor, course or section number.

The IU grade distribution information is located on the Office of the Registrar web page, www.registrar.indiana.edu/gradedist.

According to the Web site, the access to the grade distributions of the classes was first implemented in 1976 by the Bloomington Faculty Council after discussions concerning grade inflation in certain classes.

The grade distributions were only available to the school deans, department chairs and faculty.

The Web site includes several elements in addition to grade distribution, said Roland Cote, the associate vice provost for Enrollment Management and Registrar, in an e-mail interview.

“These reports served as the basis for current finals grades reports that are made available to students at the end of each term,” Cote said.

Because of this huge change, new data files were designed that were separate from the original historical files, and they are made available on the Web by course and section.

Some of the information included for each class on the Web as of Sunday are the number of students that withdrew from the class, the percent of the students that were majors, the average grade of the class, the average GPA of all the students and the instructor.

The Web site was created because much of the faculty wanted these grade distributions posted for other faculty members and even students.

“The Bloomington Faculty Council wanted it,” said Linda Shepard, senior associate registrar. “They thought it was appropriate for students to have access to.”

The Web site is not only used for looking up grade distributions. According to Shepard, it is also used for faculty tenure and faculty promotions.

Students have access to this information to help them search for classes as well as to see which teachers they’d like to have. Shepard said the registrar’s office doesn’t survey students so she doesn’t know if students use it to take easier classes.

“It is not surprising that some students have used the site in conjunction with academic advising, degree progress reports, the planner, the schedule of classes, online course descriptions and other information when planning their enrollment,” said Michael Carroll, senior associate registrar, in an e-mail interview.

Cote said the grade distribution information along with the context information is only one resource that students might refer to when choosing classes.

“The University is committed to providing students with a network of advisers who have a number of resources at their disposal to guide students through the course selection process,” Cote said.