SAS vs. Wharton. Pen and ink. Originally published in the Daily Pennsylvanian on January 11, 2007.
Getting an A at Wharton (Penn’s business school) was definitely not a cake walk, particularly for core subjects that were graded on a curve. I remember being ecstatic to score 13/15 on a Stat problem set, only to find out that the median grade was 14.5, meaning that I’d essentially gotten a B-. (Different professors had different ways of curving… The cartoon is a generalization.)
At least there was a method to the madness, though. For liberal arts classes at the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS), students were essentially in the hands of our TA’s moodswings as they graded our papers. Obviously the worst case scenario and not true for every class, but my way of poking fun at the perils of quant vs. qualitative grading…
This is a scan of the drawing as it appeared in the DP. It was one of two that I submitted for my second tryout for the art staff. More about my stint at the DP here.