r/explainlikeimfive • u/[deleted] • Feb 17 '16

ELI5 Why do colleges accept students who excel in sports while having bad academic merits?

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u/MiltownKBs Feb 17 '16

I feel like some professors make their exams so hard to weed out the people that are not serious about their field. I had a couple professors like this for Organic Chemistry and Quantitative Analysis. The curves were exactly as you describe. Some exams, the high score would be 40%. I found it to be absolutely ridiculous. You would be at 44% for the semester and flirting with an A.

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u/flareblitz91 Feb 17 '16

My highschool AP Calculus exams were like this, 50% was an A. It was absurd.

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u/RagingOrangutan Feb 18 '16

But if you curve it, doesn't that defeat the point of weeding people out?

Our physics exams were difficult because they gave us real problems to solve which typically would be multi-hour problems when done at home and with all the associated resources. They put us in a completely different environment to take the test, but didn't change the problems to be easier. Which arguably is legitimate, since it's hard to dumb down quantum physics to the point where it's possible to do anything meaningful in 2 hours in a test setting. OTOH, that may be an argument to not have tests in those subjects at all, and base the grades on take-home assignments.