How does grading work?

[roboticsapplicant]

I'm wondering - how does grading tend to work in grad school? I've been told that getting good grades in classes is important, and typically for a class to count towards a requirement, you need an A- or better. But how exactly are the classes themselves graded?

 

In my classes, I'm putting in the effort, doing the homework, and doing reasonably well (for example, my grades on individual assignments have ranged in the 90s, with some 80s mixed in). I'm not perfect, I lose a few points here and there. I don't expect to do perfectly on exams, but I expect to do reasonably well.

 

So I guess my point is, how worried should I be? Are classes effectively curved so that students who put in reasonable effort and do reasonably well get A's? My main worry is that I'll have a bad day taking a test or screw up a problem on the homework and have that snowball into not getting credit for the class cause I got a B+.

 

I'm also guessing this varies by program - for context, I'm in the EECS department at Michigan.

 

As a corollary, how do you trade off homework time and research time? Right now, I've been operating by the principle that classwork comes first. But I would love it if I could just say "good enough" and have significantly more time for research.

[TakeruK]

This is very dependent on your program! But if you want to hear comparisons, 1 credit = 1 expected hour of work per week at my school. Most of my courses at 9 credits, so this means 9 hours of work per week. 3 hours is lecture, I probably spend 5-6 hours on homework. This means I usually skip most of my reading except for whatever is required to do the homework. Some weeks there are no homework, or an easier homework, so that leaves extra time to study for finals or work on a class project. We usually take 3 courses per term in the first year, so that's 27 hours for classwork. We also had to do 2 projects in the first year, so I spent about 20-25 hours per week on research. I try to operate on the principle that classwork should only be completed to "good enough" but that is a LOT harder said than done. In fact, even though the math works out here, I am pretty sure I actually spent more time on classes some weeks!

 

Also, our profs here told us that if we got all As, then we were working too hard on classes, but a B+ average might mean that we need to spend more time. Unlike other schools, our current program will grant credit for any passing grade, I think. So, I think most students here aim for an A- or A, to get an average in between, so an occasional B+ is okay. 

 

But this is all calibrated to my school, my program. It's not going to be directly helpful to you at your program, other than a perspective on how it might work at other places!

[Francophile1]

I am wondering about this too. For us we just have either short writing or presentations during the semester and final papers that's all