yoyoma wrote:Hey vanwinkle,
I've been reading TLS for a while and have noticed that you give a lot of useful, well thought out advice. I was wondering if you knew anything about Minnesota and their policies regarding section stacking. My situation is quoted at the beginning of the thread. Thanks!
I didn't know anything about it, but I found some information online. Searching for curve information I found this document on the UMN website:
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It indicates that the curve is not strictly fixed to a specific point, but that the average awarded grade in every class must be curved to fall between a B (3.00) and a B+ (3.33). They also publish grades in quartiles, with the "Fourth Quartile" for 2009 (the bottom 25% of the 2009 class) being at or below a 3.078 overall GPA average.
Since your scholarship is based on a 2.5 or greater GPA, it appears that you'd have to not just finish in the bottom quarter of your class but be buried pretty deep within it. It's feasible that you could finish near the bottom of your class and still be above a 2.5 GPA. This doesn't strike me as the typical "section stacking" behavior, because that tends to be set up with much higher minimums designed to exclude large number of students (for example, filling a section with people who all must be in the top 1/4 of their class, meaning that 3/4 of them cannot meet their scholarship requirements no matter what).
Instead, this looks like a very, very low minimum benchmark that they've set to make sure you don't show up and just drag your heels so much that you embarrass yourself and the school. I wouldn't consider that "section stacking" behavior at all, it sounds like they're just trying to guarantee they won't keep paying tuition for people who ought to be failed out.