<p>I got accepted to MIT and also got the Regents Scholarship for UC Berkeley for chemical engineering. I realize that the Regents perks (priority enrollment and housing, faculty advisor, networking) is, for the most part, available for all MIT students because it's a private school. MIT's financial package is affordable but still more expensive than instate tuition at Cal plus the minor Regents monetary award. I suppose my main concern is academic rigor. Is it harder to get a GPA high enough for grad school admission at Berkeley (with its bell curves and cutthroat competition) or at MIT (when surrounded by the top STEM students in the world)? I'm posting this on the Cal forum too to help me make my decision.</p>
<p>Well, it depends on what grad school you are talking about. If you can make a 4.3/5.0 GPA, you get into the one year master’s program at MIT automatically. There is no cut-off for PhD studies, but the standards are higher. </p>
<p>In terms of it being harder to get a good GPA, MIT is harder than any college with the exception of Caltech. But Berkeley is known for grade deflation too. And MIT’s classes are effectively curved as well.</p>
<p>But getting into grad school shouldn’t be your most important concern. Unlike in science, the most significant degree you will get in engineering is your bachelor’s degree.</p>
<p>I kinda want to go to Berkeley for grad school, although I realize that it’s very far down the road. Also, I know that Cal doesn’t generally accept its undergrads for grad school so if I go to Cal, I would aim for someplace else.</p>
<p>I want at least a masters. I may try to get a PhD and become a researcher. It’s more fun and easy to do research with an engineering mindset, which is why I’m pursuing a ChemE major. Thank you for your quick response.</p>
<p>Does MIT have lots of grade deflation? It can’t be as bad as Princeton’s…</p>
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<p>MIT invented grade deflation.</p>
<p>I think the amount of grade deflation at MIT is wildly overstated (the same is true of Caltech which has seen rapid grade inflation in recent years). Popular opinion seems to be that the average MIT GPA is ~4.2 but this is never supported with any sources. I think a reasonable estimate for the average GPA at MIT is between 4.3 and 4.4 based on the FSILG average (4.38 <a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N8/fsilg.html”>http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N8/fsilg.html</a>), and this report <a href=“https://web.mit.edu/committees/cup/mit-only/P-NRandExp.pdf”>https://web.mit.edu/committees/cup/mit-only/P-NRandExp.pdf</a> (requires MIT certificates sorry) that gives the average MIT sophomore GPA as between 4.2 and 4.3 ~7 years ago so adjusting for inflation since then (observed in the FSILG GPA average and national trends) and the tendency of grades to increase as class year increases produces another estimate of 4.3-4.4. My guess is that grading at MIT is similar to grading at Princeton. Average GPAs at Berkeley are much lower but students are also much weaker so it’s hard to compare MIT’s grading with Berkeley’s grading.</p>
<p>I haven’t taken a class there in nearly 15 years. However, it used to be that humanities classes were by-and-large a mix of A’s and B’s, and they raised most people’s averages a little since 1/4 to 1/5 of most people’s classes were humanities. The mean in my engineering classes was the B/C line. Some of my science classes had means such that 60% of the students got B’s or better. The number of A’s varied between 15%-30% of the class. This doesn’t make for a GPA of 4.3-4.4. </p>
<p>This is just an MIT rowing website, but they say the average GPA “hovers between 4.1-4.2.”
<a href=“http://mitathletics.com/sports/m-crewlt/FAQ09-10”>http://mitathletics.com/sports/m-crewlt/FAQ09-10</a></p>
<p>At MIT, I generally saw 2 different grade scales for most of my courses.</p>
<p>90%: A, 80% B, 70% C.</p>
<p>and</p>
<p>85%: A, 72%: B, 63%: C</p>
<p>depending on the class. I have heard of classes that curve, though I rarely encountered that in the classes I took. Usually some absolute grading scale was used, like those I mentioned above.</p>
<p>I do remember a course where the first exam scores were way low across the board. I think the class average was around 60%, so the professor curved his grading scale for that test (and only that one test) such that 60% was considered a C- rather than a D.</p>
<p>I knew people who had gotten a variety of GPA ranges at MIT. I had a friend who got 4.9 GPA (boy did that annoy him) and another friend who barely graduated by the skin of her teeth. That being said, I seemed like, on average, most folks I knew generally got B’s in their classes, with a mix of A’s and C’s here and there. So, a general population GPA of around 4.0 to 4.4 seems about right.</p>
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<p>My classes generally ended up in that realm, but they almost never announced the grading scale in advance… because they changed based on how the class did. Which is curving.</p>
<p>Bump</p>
<p>I think more advanced classes tend to not have predetermined grade lines and also to have more generous grade distributions (I got an A- with ~82% in 6.207/14.15). There has obviously been some grade inflation since 15 years ago and engineering classes might be graded harsher but 15-30% As seems kinda low and I think in the vast majority of classes >60% of the class gets As or Bs. I have no idea where the rowing site is getting that average. There are many people who claim to know the MIT average gpa but can’t or don’t provide any citations. I give such sources little weight. An average gpa in the 4.1-4.2 range would imply the average FSILG gpa would be .3-.5 higher than that of non FSILG students which strikes me as extremely implausible given similar data from peer schools.</p>
<p>Usually curving implies the grade distribution is entirely predetermined instead of some mixture of predistribution and class performance on exams. I believe the latter is far more common than the former.</p>
<p>According to MIT’s Division of Student Life, for fall 2012 FSILG community, GPA averages were…
Panhellenic Association: 4.46
Living Group Council: 4.44
All FSILG Community: 4.38
Interfraternity Council: 4.33</p>
<p><a href=“http://studentlife.mit.edu/spring-2012-semester-gpa”>http://studentlife.mit.edu/spring-2012-semester-gpa</a></p>
<p>YAY! My GPA was above those averages!</p>
<p>That’s the fall 2013 not 2012 data that I linked to above.</p>
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<p>I believe this is actually the case, though I have not seen the overall GPA quoted officially anywhere. (But I will note that fraternities drag down the average, compared to sororities and ILGs, which is what I expected.)</p>
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<p>Why exactly do you believe this? Presumably the lower GPA of frats compared to sororities and ILGS is because guys have lower GPAs.</p>
<p>Girls rule!</p>
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<p>While it’s possible that guys overall just perform less well at MIT, what I’ve seen of the fraternity system does not seem particularly helpful to academics, unlike what I’ve seen of sororities and ILGs.</p>
<p>^I agree with piper.</p>
<p>I was wondering why you thought it was plausible that the average FSILG GPA would be .3-.5 higher than the average non FSILG GPA. If you think frats are not particularly helpful towards academics (something I would probably agree with) this claims seems even less likely.</p>
<p>I don’t know anything about this data but just a shot in the dark–</p>
<p>Some of the FSILGs seem to attract more international students–whether it’s because of the cost, the ability to live more independently, or preexisting cultural groups, I don’t know. Some (not all!) of these international students seem to perform far above the mean. But beyond that, it seems that living in an independent living group requires some of the same skills as succeeding at MIT. I am thinking in particular of WILG (Women’s Independent Living Group), which I believe has the highest FSILG GPA and is an absolutely amazing place with some of the most intelligent people I have met. On top of that they seem to be very good at self-managing and organizing their time, which is not only important for running an independent living group but is also crucial–perhaps moreso than anything else–to academic success at MIT.</p>
<p>Actually, for fall 2013, WILG was 19th out of 39 FSILGs with a 4.41 GPA.
<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N8/graphics/fsilg.html”>http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N8/graphics/fsilg.html</a></p>
<p>TEP scored highest at 4.73</p>