At Stanford students that were failing a class or getting a grade that was too low would just drop it and retake it the next semester. At San Jose State you couldn't drop a class after the first two days. Stanford you could retake a class for a higher grade. SJSU, you could retake a class if the grade was lower than a C. But they'd average the two grades.

San Jose States Engineering department also graded on a curve, no exceptions. Only 5-8 people out of a class of 30 was going to get an A.

Also at San Jose State if your grades dropped too low you didn't get put on academic probation, you were gone.

Not just picking on Stanford, I've heard similar reports from people that went to other high ranked schools.

That's like judging an engineer based on a blended average of their output, for 3 months, compared to Nikola Tesla.

If you can't compete with him, sorry, it's gonna have to be a B-.

Also my mothers comment was if everyone does really really well on a test then it wasn't hard enough. The reverse is sort of true. If everyone does poorly then either the test test was too hard or the instructor failed to teach the material.

No matter if you got a 4.0, you're still never going to be graded the same as a Stanford grad*. It's set for life (unless you go to Stanford for a MS/PhD..)

The saying at Frosh camp was 'Look to your left. Look to your right. One of you is not going to graduate'.

I wonder what has changed since then to so drastically change the graduation rate.

[I've never heard any very good arguments for either high or low pass rates]

sigh

But I dont actually know what goes on in ivy and off ivy league elite schools.

Also consider that these may just be better run schools which also provide more and more useful assistance to students.

Edit: I would like to add I think this article title is extremely clickbaity, and plays on the recently resurgent class warfare phenomenon. It pains me that articles like this, from sources like this, are becoming normalized and even acceptable on HN. There's no merit to this biased pile of shit. And I'm not an ivy league graduate having a security crisis. Journalism should be objective.

You may no particularly like the author's point of view -- but you looked carefully, you might have noticed it was placed in he "Perspective" section, which as the name implies, is dedicated to expressing what are commonly known as "points of view" -- otherwise known as "biases". Which, forming the very core of our cognitive processes as they do, are very far from flaws -- an in fact, when used properly, not just useful, but absolutely crucial to one's survival in this murky, deeply ambiguous and ambivalent world of ours.

And at least the author gave some supporting observations to back up their (clearly labeled as such) point of view. OTOH the sentence you're offering above provides no insights or justifications; it is, quite literally, a pure expletive.

Journalism should be objective.

Should it, now?

“So much for Objective Journalism. Don't bother to look for it here--not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”

-- Hunter S Thompson

I dont care either way for the author's point of view. I am bothered by the fact that a news source publishes so much in opinion, and that people end up more polarized after the article, not because of its factual content, but because of its vitriol.

I believe it irresponsible to create and publish content like this, because it amounts to propaganda - I dont care side of our false dichotomy you are on, huff post is up there with breibart.

Opinion pieces should not affect our beliefs as much as they do, but let's be real, communities feed off of opinion pieces. We all do, and I come to HN specifically to minimize my exposure to feel good emotional reinforcement that leads to irrational thinking.

Sorry for the rant.

Edit: your choice of quote may be more effective than you realize, I am a big fan of Thompson's persona. Ironic, I know.

Sorry for the rant.

Nothing to be sorry for; you're just being honest (both intellectually and in your opinions). And HST himself would probably agree that that's all that matters.

- Warren Buffet

[0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/theres-b...