When I was in grad school in the late 90's I was a teaching assistant (large public university--not particularly selective) and had to grade research papers. There were 200 students in the class, each with a 5 page paper, so that was fun. The prof insisted I grade on a bell curve with almost everyone getting C's and almost no one getting A's. The students weren't too happy with me.
I also have to say that they deserved the grades that they got! Most students couldn't write grammatically correct sentences, much less coherent paragraphs or whole papers. Yikes--it was difficult wading through all of that.
