By DAVID OBERMAN

STAFF WRITER

Competition for getting into elite colleges is more ferocious and more pertinent than it has ever been. It seems students must discover a cure for cancer, liberate child soldiers in Africa or have a building with their last name on it in order to gain admission into many schools. But what happens when these students get into college?

Over 40 years ago, high school was the minimum bar for getting a paying job. Many people, my father included, did not get a college degree because it was not essential to success. High school prepared students to function in the real world while college qualified students for advanced, professional jobs. In today’s world, the purpose of high school is to advance to college.  College, unfortunately, has not been able to follow suit. It does not prepare students for the next level, the real world.

With many more students moving on to college, competition even from the beginning is fierce.

In the business world there is a perception of relentless competition. Recent college graduates, however, never realistically faced competition from their peers.

Once in the real world, recent college graduates are constantly competing with their peers. They are competing with their colleagues at their respective firms as well as their peers in other firms around the world.

Newly-hired professionals are unprepared for this newly-competitive environment. While most can deal with this new problem fairly easily, they must find their own way. Universities are places of higher education, not training schools, but they must realistically deal with the place in the world they hold. They need to find a way to simulate competition in the real world and teach students how to deal with it. How can universities be a place for students to practice professional competition with their peers?

Classes that have group projects, such as all of those in the core at the  Gabelli School of Business, should have a competition-based element. Many top business schools, such as the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and NYU’s Stern School of Business, have implemented curve-based classes in their respective curricula. Many argue that curve classes have some deficiencies; curves must be done the right way, however, in order to prevent an unfair advantage or disadvantage while encouraging competition.

A student in a curved class can get high as 95 in a class and end up with a B because of other students’ high scores. Some professors take this as a sign that the class did not study enough, but it is really a result of the way professors design tests or the way they present the subject material. Many professors will not acknowledge that their test scores should not be in this low range, citing the nature of their material.

There is, of course, another facet of this subject to consider: the high-achievers, who should be rewarded for their excellence. Some professors will often take them out of the curve since they are considered outliers (for which other students no doubt are thankful). The amount of effort or natural talent required in order to beat a curve by such a substantial amount should, these professors claim, be rewarded. The curved class does no such thing.

The class in which students get a grade based simply on their raw percentage score does not pay homage to the difficulty of the test. It becomes obvious that some sort of measure is necessary to reward high performing student in light of the performance of their peers. It would also create a spirit of competition among students, similar to the real world.

Basing a small percentage — five to ten percent — on their class ranking relative to the curve would be an excellent way to encourage competition. If the students’ grades were to be graphed, the students scores should be leaning to the right, with the curve based on the raw percent score of the exam.

For example, the exam score competition is weighted at 5 percent. A student who scored a 60 percent but was the top scoring student would receive a full five percent weighted to his or her grade. If the average were 30 percent, those students who scored near 30 percent would recieve two points out of five for the weighting comoponent. Those who fell just below the average would receive only one. Those who were substantially below would recieve zero points of five.

The curve system would reward the highest achieving students without substantially affecting those near the class average. It would not adjust for poorly designed tests, but it is one way to reward the highest achievers and take points away from underachievers. Furthermore, instituting such a system would simulate the real world competition that exists in business and many other careers.

David Oberman, GSB ’15, is a finance major from Palos Verdes Estates, Calif.