Anyone want to provide characterizations of the seven sister schools?

I second the comment about zero grade inflation at BMC. I took several courses at Penn and work that would merit a 3.3-3.7 at BMC, was easily a 4.0 at Penn.

Just a note - you can get a picture of what happened with grading at Barnard by looking at numbers required for latin honors over the years, because it is calculated by looking at top 5%, 10%, & 20% grades derived from averaging student GPA’s for the preceding 3 years. I’ve checked and it continues to creep up slightly --graduates currently need a 3.94+ GPA to graduate summa cum laude. It doesn’t mean that the classes are easy – it’s still hard work to get an A. But not that hard to get a B – what I saw with my daughter is that if she just did all of the work in a class without putting in extra effort, she ended up with an A-. If she put her best effort and focused on the class, then she’d get an A. I’d note that my d. was a poli sci major— it’s possible that her experience would have been very different had she been a STEM major… although somehow or other she did also manage to pull an A in her statistics class.

That’s really interesting, @calmom‌. I’ve spoken to a couple BMC Deans about the grade deflation, and they said that generally as long as you don’t miss class and turn in the work, you’ll get a 3.0. Most people who put in effort fall into the 3.3-3.7 range. 4.0s are reserved for really high caliber work. Our summa graduates are just the top ten of the class, but that generally equates to a GPA in the 3.90 and above range.