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I would really appreciate any advice from the math wizards.

Last semester I finished with a 3.75, which put me in the top 7% of a class of about 104.

This semester I finished with a 3.73, so now I have a 3.74.

The problem is this semester they gave out A+s whereas last semester they did not. Is there any way to tell how far I plummeted?

Thank you so much in advance.

I could be absolutely incorrect, but you may not have dropped at all and could have even go up. Unless you have some indication of what someone's new rank is or have the cutoffs, I am not sure you could tell.

You could estimate by just leaving everything the same and seeing where your new GPA fits in, but that wouldn't be correct.

Completely anecdotal, but a .01 drop in my GPA was a 2.9% addition to my rank.

Thank you for the advice. I appreciate it.

UnderrateOverachieve wrote:Completely anecdotal, but a .01 drop in my GPA was a 2.9% addition to my rank.

This sounds about right. Many high graders from semester 1 will crunch down towards the middle in semester 2. More or less maintaining your already-high gpa while others fall will probably mean your class rank went up if anything, OP. Assuming the A+'s were not handed out like candy (ie. one per section at most), it's possible that most of them went to folks who already had your gpa beat, which doesn't affect you at all.

It doesn't matter if they started handing out A+ grades. What matters is if the curves and cutoffs changed when they started doing that. If they bumped their median by 0.3-0.4 when they added the A+, then yes you fell significantly in rank.

Stevoman wrote:It doesn't matter if they started handing out A+ grades. What matters is if the curves and cutoffs changed when they started doing that. If they bumped their median by 0.3-0.4 when they added the A+, then yes you fell significantly in rank.

Not necessarily true. Depending on where median is, even if it was raised, his rank could have even increased with a drop in GPA. When you're at the very top of your class, a minor adjustment in curve matters much less than the performance of the students who were ahead of you, especially when one semester of grades is half of your total GPA.

Fairly useless to speculate. I tried to offer some random guess just to make the person feel a little better, but it is completely possible he dropped far out of the top 10% or even increased to 6%+. No idea without more information about the curve and other pertinent information.

Best wishes for OP! Let us know when the cutoffs get released.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

For an update, my .01 drop moved me from top-10% to top-5%. Go figure.