Putting you in the know

Despite what rumours you have heard about organic chemistry, if you look at the grade distribution trends from 2002 to 2008 (I only went back as far as 2002 because pre-2002 CHEM 233 was originally comprised of CHEM 231 and 232 taken over 2 terms), I think that you have less to worry about failing than achieving a low disappointing mark in the end. Here, I have spent some time looking at past grade distributions for this course and compiled some simple stats about CHEM 233 so you don't have to go through the trouble yourself of looking through it all. I am by no means a STATS expert, but I'd like to share these interesting finds with you.


FYI, the average mark for every year is taken from averaging all the sections of CHEM 233 in that year combined (there's about 1200 students taking CHEM 233/year). As you can see with the graph above, there is clearly a steady and strong rise towards a higher overall average in CHEM 233. Students in recent years are doing better than they were a few years back. However, the average still seems low at its best of 66% last year. This rise is a good sign and can be attributed to profs realizing how to better teach the course, the trimming down of course content (what you have to learn now is only a fraction of what students had to know in 2002), more students being aware of the perils of CHEM 233 and perhaps pre-studying before the term starts, or the one we would like to believe which is that students of younger generations are increasingly becoming smarter and smarter. I didn't show the standard deviation error bars, but just to tell you, the deviations of grades around the means have remained quite constant at around +/-15% from the reported yearly averages. The grades overall are improving, however, we still have the problem of too great a spread in marks from 0% all the way to 100%. Hopefully, this great spread will be reduced over the years as students take on better personal studying habits and profs become better at teaching the course. Now let's look below at the failure rate trends from 2002-2008.

FYI, the failure rate was calculated by taking the total number of people who failed divided by the total number of students enrolled in that year. As you can see, the failure rate was at its highest at about 30%. Last year, the failure rate had been significantly reduced to only 14%. So despite what you heard from rumours, there isn't really a massacre of students' dreams and hopes. What's true is that a lot of students fail their midterm(s), but once it's all settled, most students pass. The biggest problem in reality is that you end up with a lot of students who pass but are extremely disappointed at their marks because a CHEM 233 mark is usually lower with respect to other course grades. I can help you correct that.

Despite what you think, UBC does NOT want you to fail. It'll actually cost UBC more to fail you in terms of cost efficiency in student turnover. More students failing means more empty spots in upper year courses. UBC makes less money by having a prof teach below the maximum capacity a classroom can hold at a given time. With the 2010 Winter Olympics around the corner, UBC is undergoing massive proliferation in construction and renovations and that's going to cost lots of moolah. UBC needs more students passing and more tuition revenue. This notion that UBC doesn't want you to fail may be totally false, but heh, who cares? I love rumours!