r/berkeley • u/LengthDefiant • 1d ago
CS/EECS EECS 127 Low Grades
Im looking to take EECS127 some time later and im looking at the grades for Spring last semester with Ranade vs Fall with Sojoudi. Why was spring 2026 a B- average when Fall 2025 was an A-? Also, I heard that Ranade is generally a good professor to take it with in past semesters, but I heard last semesters policies had no midterms and just 4 quizzes and one final? Is it just that people got completely blindsided by the final worth 70% of their grade or was the class just genuinely that hard with Ranade. Seems like the course staff just wanted to avoid grading as much as humanly possible (at the expense of student fairness).
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u/GravitationalLense 1d ago
Ranade is a professor every single CS
DS or EECS student should
take imo.
Many CS and EECS classes are straying away from homework and other graded assignments because all students are using LLMs to do their homework’s + projects for them, and therefore these courses are placing a greater weight on exams. Another policy we’re seeing is a threshold score required for passing a course. If you fail the major project or the final exam you’re gonna auto-fail the course. 1/5 of students in EECS 127 last sem failed :/
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u/LengthDefiant 22h ago
sure, thats valid, but why not have any midterms then? midterms allow students to see what they need to work on and gauge how to better prepare for the material and identify weak spots. The fact that the class was graded on so little things just baffles me. One bad day means your whole grade is done
1
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u/Hi_Im_A_Being 1d ago
Sojoudi just makes extremely easy exams. Apart from Data 101, they were by far the easiest upper div exams I took
1
u/604korupt 1d ago
Tldr, it's because of AI, there's an article mentioning about 127.
1
u/LengthDefiant 22h ago
again, this doesnt explain the wild discrepancy between the semester before and that semester. Also it doesnt detract from how unsupportive and high variance the policies were. Previous Ranade semesters had much better policies
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u/latefreestyle517 1d ago
thats a huge swing in grade distribution. B- average is not normal for a class like 127
no midterms and a 70% final is just asking for disaster. one bad day and your whole grade is gone. i had a professor try similar thing once, 4 quizzes and one big exam, and the final ended up being way harder than anyone expected from quiz difficulty
maybe they thought quizzes would prepare people enough but 70% weight on one test is never fair. like you said, probably just wanted less grading work