What’s the average GPA for top 25 colleges? Is it easy to maintain 4.0?
Um. It is not easy to maintain a 4.0 at any of the top 25. It does depend some on your major, too. It is generally harder to maintain a high GPA in STEM majors.
Thanks @intparent
*Bump
Depends on the college. All T-20s have a certain amount of grade inflation. The average GPA of all Ivies are above 3.4. Princeton has the lowest at 3.49, while Brown has the highest at 3.71. Stanford has 3.66, Duke has 3.56, WashU has 3.52, as do Johns Hopkins and Northwestern. In short, all T-20s have grade inflation, as do the next 20 or 30 down the rankings. It is worse at private schools, BTW.
So, while a 4.0 average may be difficult, a 3.5 average will not be all that difficult at a T-20 college.
http://www.gradeinflation.com/ (see list of colleges at the bottom of this page)
“All T-20s have a certain amount of grade inflation.”
Or perhaps when you put a bunch of valedictorians, top stat scorers, etc and the best professors in the world together in one classroom the results are better as reflected by cumulative GPA. Getting into a top 20 takes a fair amount of determination and smarts. Shouldn’t surprise anyone that they get better grades as a cohort in college given this same group was the best of the best in HS.
It’s not “easy” to maintain a 4.00 at a top 20, it’s just a reality that if you have proven capable of maintaining a 4.00 as a HS student you are more likely to be able to continue this success at the college level.
It’s like putting a bunch of top proven chefs in one kitchen with great fresh ingredients…you would expect some great meals to be produced with frequency.
Exactly^. Input=Output. UPenn freshmen come with much higher GPA than Penn State freshmen so no wonder they leave with a higher GPA.
However, top schools do admit hooked applicants with lesser academic ability so likely there is some individual inflation so they can have similar results as rest of the school and holistic policy doesn’t get questioned. Some probably are late bloomers and thrive at right college.
I know two 1500+ SAT, straight-A HS kids working their tails off to stay around a 3.4-3.5 at Princeton.
Let’s not forget that high school GPA is high school specific, school X’s top A+ student may not even make straight Bs at a challenging school Y.
The hooked admits are probably mostly “ordinary excellent” high school students, but without or with less of the high school superstar credentials that unhooked admits typically need to get into those schools. I.e. they should be able to do well in college, even if they may not be as strong students as their peers at super-selective colleges.
The average GPA for students at four-year colleges in the US is around 3.15. Top 25 schools is closer to 3.4-3.5.
Apparently linking to the actual data offended someone at CC - it’s easy to Google.
“UPenn freshmen come with much higher GPA than Penn State freshmen so no wonder they leave with a higher GPA”
I don’t understand this one. Why would a HS GPA determine a college GPA? There’s not a global absolute scale like standardized testing.
Cornell average GPA is 3.36. Hope College is 3.39. I doubt the latter’s students had higher HS GPAs
Georgetown Student here.
The top 5% is around a 3.92
The Top 15% is above 3.83
The top 25% is above 3.75
https://college.georgetown.edu/advising/latin-honors
A 4.0 is likely AT LEAST within the top 1% of the school. It is insanely hard, but if that’s your goal, good for you. Just know that you have to be disciplined and will likely have to make sacrifices in other aspects of college.
Unlike in high school, getting a perfect GPA is not critical in college. Even med schools and top banks/consulting firms look for 3.6+, so many students don’t aim for the perfect 4.0. Rather, they maximize their social and extracurricular life while shooting to earn a 3.6-3.7.
College is all about tradeoffs. Hypothetically…
If you party 90% and study 10%, you might get a 2.5
If you party 30% and study 70%, you might end up with 3.6
(this is just hypothetical, and it is different for everyone)
The key is finding your balance between fun and school while keeping the GPA you are targeting.
Maybe. They also have more flexibility to drop courses you are tanking in without it showing in any way on your transcript. This has been our experience with several nieces and nephews who have gone to Ivy, T-20 and some state schools too.
The average GPA of most of the colleges is 3.5-4.0
Not according to http://www.gradeinflation.com/ .