Most of my engineering and math courses worked on a linear curve. The highest grade in the class was made into a 100% and the rest of the class was slid up by an equal number of percentage points.
Sometimes this happened for the entire class grade, other times it just happened with tests.
In my general experience, a 70% was a pretty good score. Most profs aimed to have tests hard enough that 80% was around the top anyone got.
All that said, having everything rely on final exams seems foolish. Computer Science is mostly taught through projects, I feel as though my upper level courses had exams more as a matter of "well I think we are supposed to have tests, so, umm, here we go" than anything else.
Not to mention finals lead to cramming, which lead to horrible retention of material. Small cumulative exams spaced throughout the quarter/semester lead to much better recollection of material overall.
Edit: As for cheating, well....
I only ever cheated in one course, and only then because the material was horribly unfair and the professor was terrible at teaching. Cheating in this case consisted of putting material that we were expected to rote memorize (!!) on to my calculator. (For reference, it was chemistry class, before that class I used to really like chemistry... :( )
Asides from that? I think everyone knows of the student who seomehow got through even a hard program (such as CS!) without really doing his or her fair share, but from what I noticed (although I am pretty oblivious) cheating wasn't all that common.
In regards to grades, they mattered far less once I was in my department. :) (Thankfully!)
Sometimes this happened for the entire class grade, other times it just happened with tests.
In my general experience, a 70% was a pretty good score. Most profs aimed to have tests hard enough that 80% was around the top anyone got.
All that said, having everything rely on final exams seems foolish. Computer Science is mostly taught through projects, I feel as though my upper level courses had exams more as a matter of "well I think we are supposed to have tests, so, umm, here we go" than anything else.
Not to mention finals lead to cramming, which lead to horrible retention of material. Small cumulative exams spaced throughout the quarter/semester lead to much better recollection of material overall.
Edit: As for cheating, well....
I only ever cheated in one course, and only then because the material was horribly unfair and the professor was terrible at teaching. Cheating in this case consisted of putting material that we were expected to rote memorize (!!) on to my calculator. (For reference, it was chemistry class, before that class I used to really like chemistry... :( )
Asides from that? I think everyone knows of the student who seomehow got through even a hard program (such as CS!) without really doing his or her fair share, but from what I noticed (although I am pretty oblivious) cheating wasn't all that common.
In regards to grades, they mattered far less once I was in my department. :) (Thankfully!)