I think a discussion on this would be helpful to people, in particular undergrads worrying about grades, which I think happens to a lot of people at some point. I am an undergrad at a top 5 research institution for context, and this is pertaining to math Ph.D. admissions.
I know looking at grades in isolation w.r.t. admissions is a questionable thing to do in the first place, but I was wondering if there is some kind of consensus about sub-A grades in graduate courses. Is it commonly believed that graduate classes are free As and a student racking up Bs has a serious problem, or do people give the benefit of doubt and consider the possibility that the professor did actually give out quite a few Bs or Cs, corresponding to a higher standard?
The opinions I have gotten from professors have ranged from "no ideaan admissions perspective, don't do admissions" to "graduate courses are graded easy so this is bad" to "you did well in [another] hard graduate course that's impressive already".difficult classes valued over perfect grades? I guess the more objective answer I'm looking for is, generally how do people interpret suboptimal grades in hard coursework? Is it "okay" (i.e. common, normal, understandable) that an undergraduate struggledexample in a hard class, and happened tomind would be penalized for it grade-wise? Is a B+ considered so much worse than an A-, in thatis it signals laziness, or it's assumed that the student had to be doing very poorlybetter to gethave a B+?
The reason I ask is because grading has extreme variancecouple of difficult courses + mostly undergrad courses with all As, or a lot of difficult classes but some people make it sound like they will automatically assume certain classes are free As or close to it.
Thanks!Bs sprinkled in?