Focusing our attention on STEM courses (Fig. 4), interesting features emerge. We begin with first year introductory physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics lecture courses. These courses (indicated by stars in the figure) are the gateways to a STEM degree, required for completing any of these majors. At Michigan, most of these courses do not impose fixed grade curves, but they do have norms of practice which maintain low and stable average grades. As a result, every one of them imposes significant grade penalties on its students, with AGAs averaging -0.41 letter grades, and ranging from -0.54 to -0.15.