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-In the late 1950's, the average cumulative GPA for Berkeley undergraduates was 2.50 and has increased to approximately 3.25. A significant increase in the GPA occurred during the Vietnam War when students received a draft deferment if they remained in good academic standing.
-Of 79,791 undergraduate course grades given at UC Berkeley fall 2003, almost 50% were A's, approximately 35% were B's, and less than 5% were D's or F's.
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<p>A 3.25 average GPA is still below the averages GPAs of grade-inflating Ivy League schools and privates; if you calculate a GPA consisting of 50% As, 35% Bs, and say 15% Cs for example, that comes out to roughly a 3.35, not considering plus or minus grade fluctuations. I also think that the academic atmosphere and standards at Cal have dramatically increased as it has become an elite university and with high-caliber students.</p>
<p>People often cite statistics regarding Average GPA over time with relation to grade inflation, probably because that would fit the term "inflation" better, and because there is actual available data for such an approach.</p>
<p>A more useful and relevant approach, I think, is to describe grade inflation/deflation from the angle of the relationship between the quality of a student's knowledge and work in relation to the grade she receives. Obviously, attempts to quantify this are much more controversial and difficult, but this is far more important. A class of 2007 graduate's grades from School A are not going to be compared to someone from the class of 1957, but rather to the grades of graduates from School's X, Y, and Z. I think it would be more useful if we meant that School A's has "deflation" if a 3.0 student is doing work like/gaining as much knowledge as a student that would get a 3.5 at School X.</p>
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I also think that the academic atmosphere and standards at Cal have dramatically increased as it has become an elite university and with high-caliber students.
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<p>Well, I can't agree with the notion that Berkeley has 'become' an elite university recently. If anything, Berkeley was just as elite in the 50's as it is today, * maybe even more so *. After all, by 1951, Berkeley had just emerged from a period where it won 5 Nobels in 6 years (from 1946-1951). Berkeley would win another 5 Nobels in 6 years in the late 50's to early 60's (1959-1964). Nobels don't tell the whole story - a wide body of literature indicated that Berkeley at that time was the leading light in numerous scientific endeavors. This was clearly the Berkeley's golden age. At the time, it looked like Berkeley might make a serious run at Harvard to become the world's top university. </p>
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Berkeley's Grade "Deflation" Is A Myth?
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<p>Well, I don't know if it was ever a 'myth'. I think even the most diehard Berkeley fanatics would have to admit that there are indeed quite a few easy classes and majors at Berkeley in which you can get good grades for relatively little work. </p>
<p>The problem is the * variation * in grading. Some majors are graded much harder than others. That tends to put those students in those hard majors at a significant disadvantage relative to those students in the easy majors. For example, I remember one guy who received an outside scholarship that would for all of his schooling at Berkeley, provided he maintain a strong cum GPA (otherwise he woud lose the scholarship). It didn't matter that some majors are harder than others, it only mattered that he maintained a strong GPA. The upshot is that he ended up deciding not to major in engineering even though he liked it, because he didn't want to risk losing his scholarship. </p>
<p>Admittedly, that's an unusual situation. But there are other situations where people get 'screwed' for being in a harder major. For example, many car insurance companies will offer lower premiums to "good students" - meaning those with GPA's above a certain cutoff (usually a 3.0). Again, it doesn't matter to the insurance company that some majors are graded harder than others. All that matters is that you meet the cutoff. I've personally seen students who work hard, but are in difficult majors, who don't meet the 'good student' cutoff, and thus end up high insurance premiums, whereas some extremely lazy and untalented students in easy majors nevertheless still get deemed 'good students' and get an insurance discount.</p>
<p>Now, sure, some of you are thinking: "Yeah, but saving a few bucks on auto insurance isn't that important anyway". True, it's not hugely important. But it is one example of why grading differences are important. More important are things like grad school admissions. Some grad school admissions, especially med and law school, are * notoriously * GPA-intensive, and hence effectively punish students who take difficult majors. The same happens with some of the major scholarships. For example, you need a 3.7 to even apply for the Marshall Scholarship. It doesn't matter whether you're in a difficult major or not. They don't care. </p>
<p>how much better will a premed’s grades be if he/she took the classes in the offseason when they are suppose to be easier from what i have heard</p>
<p>for example
first fall- No premed classes
first spring- chem 1a
second fall- chem 3a, 3al, bio 1a, 1al
second spring- chem 3b, 3bl, bio 1b, phys 8a</p>
<p>how much of a difference in gpa can someone see in the offseason. very little (.1)? or very big (.3)? </p>
<p>im asking these questions because i am questioning whether or not to go to berkeley if my dream is to go to a very prestigous medical school (Stanford, Harvard, Yale, UPenn, UCSF, Etc…) i know that i need a 3.8+ and 36+ MCAT to get into those schools and Berkeley from what i have heard is very hard</p>
<p>except for chem 1a which is somewhat easier in the spring apparently, all other courses are gonna be about the same difficulty.</p>
<p>FutureENT: believe me you don’t want to take chem 3b, 3bl, physics 8a, and bio 1b all in one semester… unless you’re planning on losing your sanity for it. Taking chem 3b and 8a is intense enough… I wouldn’t add to that.
Hmm, looks like you’re going to have to modify your plans anyway… can’t take bio 1a/1al before chem 3a…
I think taking chem 1a during spring is a good idea though…</p>
<p>Grade deflation at Berkeley is a myth.</p>
<p>@sakky-Yeah, but for grad school you are competing with people who more or less have the same major. Med schools typically take people who did biological sciences or health, and law schools take people from the humanities.</p>
<p>@ cavilier: what’s ur major dude? Most engineering majors are significantly deflated relative to other engineering schools, such as Stanford.</p>
<p>Also, your point about med school is just ridiculous. It doesn’t matter what you major in. For the sake of argument, let us say that med schools take people who do biological sciences. There’s a lot of variation in GPA between biology majors at berkeley itself (for example: MCB vs IB). </p>
<p>Additionally, you are competing with other med school applicants, from grade-inflated schools such as Brown. </p>
<p>Obviously, you don’t intend to go to med or law school.</p>
<p>I haven’t declared a major.</p>
<p>I hear that about engineering majors a lot, but I’m not sure that they are. The average for most engineering classes seems to be about a B, which is roughly even with the university wide average.</p>
<p>And yeah, you’re right. I don’t intend to go to med or law school.</p>
<p>wow i just realized i revived a 3 year old thread. </p>
<p>anyways so besides chem 1a taking all the other premed classes in the offseason help is that true?</p>
<p>do you guys recommend me going to berkeley or not? if i want to go to a top 10 medical school where i need a 3.8+ gpa</p>
<p>@ Future: Oddly enough, if you think about grades, and grade distributions, then you probably won’t do well here. </p>
<p>The people who do best are those that major in what they are passionate in (regardless of GPAs/difficulty). As long as you are passionate, the grades will come naturally. A 3.8+ is very doable. </p>
<p>I have friends that take classes solely based on the grading distributions, which often backfires because of their lack of interest in the course. Forget about this off-season junk as well. </p>
<p>Aside from passion, the only “logistical” things you should do are to take the class with an instructor known to be good and (most importantly) schedule no more than 2 premed classes per term. </p>
<p>Balance 2 premed classes with 1 R&C course, and perhaps an AC course. This is really really important, because it makes getting close to a 4.0 pretty easy.</p>
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<p>And therein lies a brilliant premed strategy: major in something easier than bio while still taking the premed requirements (perhaps at a community college). Pre-law provides no such brilliant strategy because the humanities and social sciences as you have observed obtain most of their student body are already highly grade inflated. </p>
<p>But the point is, it shouldn’t be that way. Different majors should not exhibit such grading differentiation. The grade distributions of each major should be roughly the same. If it is fair for, say, the engineering majors to be harshly weeded, then the American Studies majors should also be similarly harshly weeded. What’s fair is fair.</p>
<p>Otherwise, don’t weed the engineering students, which is my preferred solution. </p>
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<p>*“The physical sciences and engineering had rigorous grading standards roughly in line with the recommendations from 1976,” stated Rine, "while the humanities and social sciences in many classes had all but given up on grades below a B, and in many courses below an A-, *</p>
<p>[Undergraduate</a> Education Colloquium, The College of Letters and Science, UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html]Undergraduate”>http://ls.berkeley.edu/undergrad/colloquia/04-11.html)</p>
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Even disregarding the rigor of the coursework and considering only the GPA, Berkeley’s mean GPA is far lower than that of other comparable universities. </p>
<p>Why, you may ask? Its because Berkeley is often compared to private schools and the mean GPA from a private school is 0.3 points higher than a public. These privates are some of the only universities of comparable rank given that Berkeley is the highest ranked public. </p>
<p>So, for many people considering Berkeley, grade deflation is real and an unavoidable aspect of the university. Anyone who compares Berkeley to a higher ranked school (whether by major or by general rankings) will not like Berkeley’s grade curve. Even looking down, there are only 3 publics to compare Berkeley to: UCLA, Michigan, and UVA.</p>
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It’s much easier to tell an Engineering student he failed an exam based around mathematics than an American Studies writing a subjective essay about democracy. The former students has little power to challenge the instructor while the latter can quarrel all day with valid arguments.</p>
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<p>One way to solve this problem is to run more easily quantifiable exams in American Studies, or more qualitative exams in engineering. For example, one exam question in American Studies could be to list every single US President in chronological order, and for every wrong answer, points are deducted. {For those who would argue that such a question would be unfair, hey, it’s no more unfair than engineering exams that essentially require students to derive a long series of equations, decrementing points for every one they get wrong.} Similarly, engineering exams could be a matter of having students design the best possible piece of technology given X number of hours in the lab. Students then could argue afterwards why their design should be worth more points than they were allotted. </p>
<p>But more importantly, simply because a discipline is subjective doesn’t mean that you can’t implement exacting standards. For example, to obtain a PhD in a humanities at Berkeley is a excruciatingly difficult process that can take well over a decade to complete. You can’t simply submit a subpar dissertation and then argue with your committee that you deserve to be granted your PhD. If your committee deems that your work is unworthy, then you’re simply not going to graduate, and a significant percentage of PhD students - well over half in some disciplines - never do finish the program. Otherwise, we would see Berkeley humanities PhD programs with nearly perfect graduation rates, and where the grad students stay for only a few years. </p>
<p>So that begs the question, if the humanities departments can enact such exacting standards for its grad students, why can’t they do the same for the undergrads?</p>
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But an exam question such as that seriously detracts from the purpose of the American Studies major. You can list all the presidents in chronological order and know nothing about American history.</p>
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In a similar sense, this seriously detracts from the purpose of an Engineering major. Its even worse than the former because a student actually has to use these skills in his career. Engineers often work in a hazardous work environment and mistakes can be dangerous. I would know, my father being a technician for a chemical plant. Instructors need to be objective and test on important concepts.</p>
<p>All in all, these “corrections” to the grade deflation of specific major compromises the academic integrity of the university. I don’t think they’re warranted given the minor problem it has now and the major problems it would cause.</p>
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<p>Similarly, you can derive long series of engineering equations to perfection, yet know nothing about actual real-world engineering. Yet deriving a laundry list of equations is precisely what many engineering exam questions require you to do. See below. </p>
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<p>I agree, but that begs the question of precisely what these important concepts are, and crucially, whether those concepts are being tested currently. The (sad) fact is, as most working engineers would surely attest to, engineering coursework, and especially engineering coursework exams have relatively little to do with the actual engineering job. As I alluded to above, no engineer actually goes around frantically deriving a long series of equations by hand within the space of 90 minutes as a regular part of his job, yet that is precisely what engineering coursework exams require you to do. Yet if you can’t do that, then you flunk your coursework and you won’t be hired for an engineering job. </p>
<p>I’ll give you an example. I know one guy who worked as a summer engineering intern, where one of the older grizzled engineers - who held a graduate degree in engineering - asked him to help him understand some of his daughter’s high school calculus homework. That engineer obviously had known calculus had some time in his life. Yet, the fact is, he had never used it in his several decades of working as a real-world engineer, and as a result, had understandably forgotten it all, to the point that he couldn’t even remember how to compute simple integrals. However, that intern clearly knew how to do so, for that was what he was being tested upon, and if he didn’t know it, he would have flunked out. I am quite confident - as was that intern - in saying that of everybody in that particular engineering office, that intern was clearly the most practiced when it came to actually deriving calculus and engineering equations. All of the other engineers had learned that material in school, but hadn’t used it in years. That intern even once brought some of his engineering texts into the office, only to have the other engineers leaf through them and laugh at how they could no longer solve even the simplest problems anymore and how far their academic skills had regressed. Yet these engineers were responsible for numerous large-scale and technically complex projects, whose underlying calculations were all handled by computer simulation. </p>
<p>The underlying fact is, the vast majority of what you learn - and certainly what you are tested upon - as an engineering student, you will never actually use. Most likely, somewhere between 90-98% of what you actually learn within an engineering program will not be used. </p>
<p>If anything, I would argue that my reform would actually make the engineering exams more relevant, not less, for it would actually test people on whether they know how to build something, not whether they can simply churn through a long string of equations. {Granted, the quarreling aspect of my proposal is probably not socially valuable, but neither is the quarreling that occurs regarding the humanities exam grading.} Engineering programs - even the best ones - are notorious for churning out engineering graduates who don’t actually know how real-world technology actually works. For example, many graduating electrical engineering students at even the best schools do not really know how, for example, a TV actually works, and certainly wouldn’t know how to build one. Many mechanical engineering students do not really understand how a a car or an airplane works, and certainly couldn’t design even a crude one. Those topics are (perhaps shockingly) not actually taught within engineering courses. </p>
<p>Hence, I agree with you that engineers sometimes do work in hazardous environments and do need to be well trained, but I am entirely unclear as to what speedy mathematical skills have to do with that. </p>
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<p>Then let me put it to you this way. As I’ve said on other threads, there’s a certain school that shall remain unnamed across the SF Bay whose engineering program is just as prominent as Berkeley’s, if not more so, yet practically never flunks out any of their students. Presumably, the engineers from that school may also work in hazardous environments where mistakes can be dangerous. So why is it fine for that school to not flunk out their engineering students, but a problem when Berkeley does so?</p>
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<p>And yet numerous ‘mistakes’ are being made on engineering exams as a matter of routine. </p>
<p>I knew a Berkeley engineering student who once received a 30% on his engineering exam - and celebrated. Why? Because the mean was a 25%. Furthermore, the curve distribution was tightly packed that his 30% was equal to an A. But consider what that means. He made mistakes on the vast majority (70%) of the exam and he freely admitted that he knew practically nothing about what was happening on the exam. But that didn’t matter - all that matters is that he knew more than the average student in that class, who knew even less. Heck, even the highest score of that exam was something in the 50’s or 60’s, meaning that even that student made mistakes on a large fraction of the exam. </p>
<p>While that is admittedly an extreme case, the fact is that many (probably most) Berkeley engineering exams have mean scores somewhere from 40-60%, which implies that the students are routinely making mistakes on large swathes of the exams, and mistake-free exams (i.e. perfect scores) practically never occur. Heck, I suspect that many (probably most) Berkeley engineering professors would concede that they themselves would not have earned perfect scores on their own exams in the allotted exam time, especially given the fact that many professors don’t write their entire exams, but rather do so in conjunction with the TA’s. </p>
<p>Hence, I agree that mistakes in an engineering work environment can be hazardous. Yet the fact of the matter is that engineering exams are deliberately made so egregiously difficult that everybody makes mistakes as a matter of routine. Surely we can agree that an exam in which the average student is making mistakes 75% of the time, and where an “exceptional” student would be one that made mistakes “only” 70% of the time, is a flawed exam. Either the admissions standards are simply too lax, or the exam is too hard.</p>
<p>I don’t think that’s as obvious as you think. Course exams don’t exist to test your abilities in the career you think you’ll have, because college isn’t simply a glorified trade school. The idea is that you like to learn things, regardless of whether or not you will go on to directly use them in your job. And if the professor constructs an exam where the person who did an average job learning will get 50%, what is wrong with that?</p>
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<p>I agree, on behalf of engineers I know who would very much back this up.</p>
<p>Though, I guess this is why there is a balance between the exam and project sides of engineering. I think the fact that engineering coursework does not correlate perfectly by any means with “real world engineering” is ultimately taken into account by grad schools, and professors from Berkeley itself have said in as many word that they take into account things outside of class, such as research experience, extremely seriously. I think projects are NOT judged on the same standards as exams. Exams are something you survive, projects are things you do really properly, or so engineering friends of mine tell me.</p>
<p>My own view is that the engineering system probably doesn’t need to be modified too much, except of course to stop admitting students who can’t handle the work, and to make the material taught relevant to current day stuff. Certainly some professors are horrible at running classes, but I guess those unfortunately exist in any discipline. Well, I guess I will also add that I think exams should probably correlate a little better with just learning the material. I agree the 40-50% means are ridiculous and rather pointless. I think the extent to which stuff taught in class is relevant to actual research varies from professor to professor and across the different degrees of specialization. For instance, in a graduate engineering class I just sat in on for kicks, things were all about what’s going on in research and how to actually approach a problem. There were plenty of derivations and equations discussed, but more conceptually, and the exams usually tested things like the assumptions made from a practical standpoint. </p>
<p>In a more fundamental course, however, I think it is important to teach the basics based on derivations, not because it will be used directly, but because the purpose of the fundamentals is to mess around with the different relevant factors affecting things that one may have to think about later. And in a more advanced setting, one can focus entirely on the actual design + real research problems, having learned the basics properly. Or, in the worst case, if one knows the basics pretty well without having taken the fundamental course, hopefully just skip it and take something more specialized. The fundamental courses should alert one to how people think about the material, not the actual material people think about, in a pedagogically sound way.</p>
<p>This is sort of the same in many fields, including mathematics, where there is no “practical-theoretical” distinction. That is, the fundamental classes introduce you to the streamlined material that tells you of important philosophies behind how people were led to think about the more current things. To REALLY get into specialized things, one needs to read research articles and go to grad school and talk to an advisor. This doesn’t make the fundamental classes irrelevant at all, because the ideas are important, and messing around with them for a few semesters helps. Of course, this isn’t ALL that someone should do with the time. It’s important to make transitions, certainly.</p>
<p>As for the discussion about humanities vs. engineering, I agree teachers in the humanities should try to make their classes no-BS, though I think one of the reasons engineering is just made tough on purpose is that it’s probably one of the few degrees that somewhat prepares you for a career in the field, and employers like to see that students met a certain streamlined program that is hard. I imagine it’s the same in the tough engineering schools overall.</p>