Boston University professors’ grade curving policies vary greatly, with some boosting marks to reflect what they say students deserve while others maintain students’ initial scores.

Smaller classes tend to yield a larger proportion of high marks, but As are still hard to come by, said archaeology department chairman Norman Hammond.

“I don’t curve beyond the university’s policy as expressed by [former Provost] Dean Berkey some years back, that the mean grade in large classes should be around B-minus or C-plus, and that too many As suggest soft grading,” he said.

The history department does not advocate curving grades, said department chairman Charles Dellheim.

“I never curve grades, nor would I ask my colleagues in the history department to do so,” he said in an email.

Chemistry professor Dan Dill said he advocates curving, particularly in large classes, so students receive the scores they accurately deserve.

“Grading based on relative performance is the only fair thing as a teacher I can do,” he said. “If the average on an exam is a 50 and the high grade is 99, then that’s an exam which shows that there’s a range of competency and understanding demonstrated in the class.”

Because there is no university policy on curve grading, curves vary for each test, Dill said. The curve is determined by the exam results, and grades are assigned “based on the average in a class,” he said.

Curving helps As retain their status of being “really, really special” because not everyone should receive high grades, Dill said.

While BU is often accused of deflating grades, policy inconsistencies in the university’s departments may actually lead to grade inflation, Dill said.

“I would not be surprised if there were departments where the average grades are above a C,” he said.

Other universities have policies that have recently undergone scrutiny. University of Massachusetts at Amherst student Brian Marquis, a 50-year-old former legal assistant, is suing UMass for a grade he received in a philosophy course. The legal studies and sociology major’s final grade of 84 was translated into a C for the semester, according to a Feb. 7 article in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian, the independently funded paper at the university.

BU’s grading inconsistencies are partly because of fundamental differences between the departments’ tests, said College of Arts and Sciences junior Evan Goodman.

“Different ways of curving aren’t always equal,” he said. “The humanities are often subjective. You can grade based on a letter, not based on exact answers. How science approaches a problem is different than how humanities approaches a problem.”

CAS junior Megan Camann said curving is good for students because it grades them accordingly to where they place in class.

“It’s supposed to fit into a bell curve, and if it doesn’t, then professors should adjust grades so that [the grades] do,” she said. “It’s easier to curve science and math and classes when there is a right answer.”