<p>Above is Boalt Hall (Berkeley) Law's chart for adjusting grade inflation at undergraduate institutions schools. Students from the schools listed in red have their GPAs bumped up, while those from colleges listed in blue have their GPAs lowered. The higher the score, the more points students would get added to their GPAs. </p>
<p>What I noticed was that the private universities with the reputation of being the most infamous abusers of grade inflation (Harvard comes to mind quickly) actually had their GPAs adjusted up quite a bit and the public institutions got the shaft. If this is true, does this chart actually account for grade inflation or does it simply reflect the quality of students at these colleges?</p>
<p>What is the source of these ratings? This link is not to a UC site. How do we know this chart is actually from UC Berkeley and not something just made up?</p>
<p>It's just standardizing by LSAT, so the adjustment only reflects how easy it is to get those grades if you assume the LSAT is perfectly correlated to true undergrad GPA potential.</p>
<p>I don't understand the Berkeley law thing. If your school is, say, an 81, does that mean that there's more grade inflation or less grade inflation than at a school with an 85? How can they separate grade inflation from good students? Or are they assuming that if a school does well on LSATs but has a lower GPA there is less grade inflation.</p>
<p>The factors are clear in the explanation: LSATs and how common (assuming this means the mode) a certain GPA is at a certain school. Presumably, schools with low LSATs and high average/mode GPAs are suspect, and schools with high LSATs and low average/mode GPAs are considered tougher to get a good grade.</p>
<p>That seems reasonable, and one should be able to make a formula that would work on a sliding scale, as this one seems to. For instance, if there are many As given out at Harvard, but LSATs are near the top of the charts, and fewer As given at Swarthmore, but LSATs are near the top of the charts, one could construct a formula that would award a higher upward adjustment to Swarthmore than to Harvard.</p>
<p>Personally, I think this is a good idea, but I would prefer it if the adjustment was made based on actual grades coming in to a school and actual grades earned while in grad school, with the LSAT formula used only when there is not enough data to construct a statistically sound system.</p>
<p>It is interesting that Boalt never published the analysis on which the ranking was based, and that they stopped using it quite a while ago. </p>
<p>Given the data, it would not be difficult to construct such a "correction" for grading rigor, and perhaps factor in predictive value at this particular law school. Makes one wonder just how rigorous the analysis might, or might not, have been.</p>
<p>i dont know how accurate this is, but if it has any truth to it, it sure puts a damper on people who like to claim certain schools are "so hard" compared to other schools, and vice versa</p>
<p>
[quote]
It is interesting that Boalt never published the analysis on which the ranking was based, and that they stopped using it quite a while ago.
[/quote]
This "ranking" was totally confidential and strictly for internal use only. Boalt never, ever intended to release it. Of course, that may be why people find it interesting.</p>
<p>The only reason that this became public was that Boalt was sued over its admissions practices. The "ranking" was uncovered during the lawsuit and introduced as evidence. Some major newspapers, like the NY Times and LA Times, then published it. I expect you could dig more info out of their archives if you were willing to pay for it. </p>
<p>It's a "snapshot" of how one top professional school regarded law school applicants from different undergraduate institutions ten years ago. You shouldn't draw too many far-reaching conclusions from it. In fact, I believe Boalt lost the lawsuit, and was required to stop using it.</p>
<p>Heh. It's interesting that Santa Barbara and Davis were ranked higher than UCLA.</p>
<p>And grade inflation at the Ivy League institutions makes perfect sense. The kids there probably work harder on average, and certainly have more intellectual strength than those elsewhere. It makes sense that you'd have more A's there than at Texas Tech - the input was superior, so it's likely that the output will be superior.</p>
<p>Personally, I think the term "grade inflation" is too blunt an instrument to really describe what happens in an institution of higher learning.</p>
<p>For example, I have often given out As in classes to students who, at a LAC where I taught previously, would probably have been given B minuses. That's not because of inflation, per se, but because those students did the best work in the class. So, to some degree, the grade one gets depends on the quality of the competition. This is demonstrably true in those classes graded on a curve, and anecdotally true in those classes that are not. It simply seems appropriate, to many faculty members, to reward the best work in the class with an A, regardless of its intrinsic merit.</p>
<p>Where grade inflation comes in is that it would simply not be possible for me to take a class of students and make the highest grade a B minus and the lowest an F. For one thing, students would stop attending my classes. For another, I'd have the administration on my back about grades, admission to grad schools, and the like. Plus, there's simply a human tendency to compare, which applies to the paragraph above, but also applies to past experience with a group of students. In other words, if you get used to giving As for B minus work then, over time, you'll continue to do so. You may even forget what true A work looks like.</p>