<p>Oh I know not everyone does topnotch work - there's a theory that Harvard deliberately selects some happy C's. That said, I think most kids at Harvard are perfectly capable of doing B work in 90% of the courses they take as long as they choose reasonably wisely. (My husband's last math course was the one where he hit the wall and was very happy he had taken it Pass/Fail for example.) But in many courses - say something like Physics 1 - it's pretty clear what the material is that needs to be mastered, if the grades range from 90 to 99 - why shouldn't they all get A's? A good teacher ought to be able to get the best out of most the class.</p>
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why shouldn't they all get A's?
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</p>
<p>Spoken like a H grad!</p>
<p>Grade deflation is a pain in the kiester but it adds value to the reward. </p>
<p>As marvelous as H grads are, few are truly brilliant. The brilliant ones are quickly recognized by the outside world and the ones who should have gotten Cs for being 'average' at Harvard are marching along with the rest of society.</p>
<p>I prefer grade deflation for it's real life lessons but hey, that's me. I happen to know you can take a rocket to the stratosphere from just about anywhere.</p>
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But, part of me thinks that a top school is enough pressure for a college student without the huge pressure of competing with others on a different curve.
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Not all schools with more difficult grading have a competitive atmosphere. My college, the University of Chicago, is known for it's tough grading, but the atmosphere is far from competitive.</p>
<p>Sorry, Reseachermom, I don't have anything better for you. The guy was a prof at Duke. Maybe he retired?</p>
<p>I agree that law and medicine focus heavily on grades and less on standardized scores. MBA tends to be less grade-obsessed.</p>
<p>Grading has been an issue of mine for a long time. Up here, the general convention is to have an average grade of C to C+ for a large class. IOW, the prof has to maintain a grade of C to C+ regardless of the average entering grade of the students. This is often done by weighing term marks lightly and putting a lot of emphasis on tests and finals. </p>
<p>The first test tends to be exploratory in nature. If students do too well, the next test will be a lot harder in order to get the "right" grade distribution. In elite programs the tests and exams are really more like IQ tests, going far beyond materials covered in lectures and texts. The result is that the same students tend to do well in all courses.</p>
<p>One of my kids graduated from such a program. She told me that while private school kids tend to have an advantage getting admitted (grade inflation?), the best students in the class are from public schools. While a good percentage of students comes in with national awards, the best students usually don't. </p>
<p>In one sense, this type of grading is unfair because the standard for an A varies greatly from school to school and from program to program. The system, I think, can be improved simply by providing additional information on the students such as average entering grade, grade distribution of graduates etc.</p>
<p>The good thing about this system is that it provides a second layer of quality control. If admission makes a "mistake" and takes in students not capable of keeping up to the average of the class, these students have little chance of graduating from the program. As a result, no special provisions are made for AA, athletes, or legacies.</p>
<p>Curious what folks thought of this.</p>
<p>Think I was brain-washed Cheers? ;)</p>
<p>I got one C+ at Harvard, more A's than B's, but not a lot more. I found it less work than prep school had been for the most part. I've got mixed feelings about grades, but on the whole I think they should be standards based, not curve based. (Maybe both should be issued?)</p>
<p>There are significant grading policy differences between public and private schools, too. At the UCs, we could not drop a class after the fifth week in the quarter (or some midpoint...it might have been sixth week). My friend at Stanford could drop a class after the final without any notation appearing on the transcript. Remember that even at a competitve UC, the grading curves vary wildly between majors and that a campus-wide summary is basically meaningless.</p>
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I found it less work than prep school had been for the most part.
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This for a A- average?</p>
<p>Yup. That's why it is called grade inflation.</p>
<p>Even Harvard, in an indirect way, admits its students are NOT more brilliant than at other places. Remember all the quotes about how the students it rejects are as smart as the ones admitted?</p>
<p>Oh well, as others have said, too, it is the mathmoms of the world and their fellow grade inflated alums that are the real losers in this. People on the outside can figure out when an A is not really an A...</p>
<p>Researchmom- I had a feeling that law school admissions may have been apart of this mix. Now that my d is a senior at Cornell and thinking Law school, I do wonder if there were things to do to further "boost" her GPA. With 6 semesters, she has about 3.7, but when you look at the GPA range of top law schools, a 3.8 with her LSAT's would make a big difference.<br>
If I knew then, what I know now, I might have suggested:</p>
<p>-- she take summer courses (as long as approved by Cornell) at the local college
the more easily attainable A or A + from Hofstra or Adelphi (on Long Island) would bring up her LSAC (or is it LSDAS) GPA. That is what counts for law school- not necessarily the "home school" GPA as LSAC will accept and convert all college credits and report it to the Law schools.</p>
<p>--when d did study abroad, I may have looked for a program that has grades of A +. D had a 4.0 from her study abroad experience- but the 4.33 would have brought her GPA up quite alot. (not that she was guaranteed an A+ but it would have been a big help.
And in today's world, it seems the LSAT score has more influence than GPA. There are plenty of kids who have 3.6 GPA or higher but only around 2% score 170 +.</p>
<p>My d would still choose Cornell over all other possibilities, but I do think there are ways to bolster one's GPA in their school of choice.
but I can see where grade inflation can be an issue, especially in grad programs where GPA counts so much in the admission process.</p>
<p>I had friends who thought Harvard was a lot harder than I did. I think I was just very well prepared. I took a few courses that were far easier than they should have been, most were about right I thought. My major was one that was often time consuming, but rarely felt like work to me. I admit I didn't take the French course that required reading a new Proust novel every week, because I thought it was waaaaaay too much work. I didn't take any of the pre-med science courses except Physics.</p>
<p>I'm not really arguing that grade inflation is a good thing and I'm certainly not arguing that there is no grade inflation at Harvard or other schools. It's a fact there more A's given in the 1990s than the 1970s, and while I think today's students seem to be more driven I'm not convinced they work that much harder. That said, I still think that arbitrarily saying that grades should be distributed along a curve is patently unfair. I don't think education should be about determining that student y did some infinitesimal amount better than student x, but rather whether or not they have mastered the material.</p>
<p>I agree, Mathmom. I'm not a fan of competition in any sphere, and in academia I'm particularly not in favor.</p>
<p>Students should be graded by the standard set for the class. If most students at a Harvard or elswhere can reach that standard, then I don't see why most shouldn't get A's.</p>
<p>Someone might have decided that our culture will be based on dog-eat-dog, but it wasn't me, and I don't live my life that way. I didn't go to a school known for grade inflation, and i did very well, but I never had the sense that I needed to compete with my fellow students. Only with myself. Isn't that how it should be?</p>
<p>Somehow, out here in the real world, I have managed to survive.</p>
<p>The comments are thoughtful.</p>
<p>Very thoughtful article and tips I had not thought of for pre-law student's mom. This board is incredible. After all this, I still feel like the kids at UC Berkeley have the roughest ride with the incredible talent there in the demanding classes and the curves.</p>
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had a 4.0 from her study abroad experience- but the 4.33 would have brought her GPA up quite alot
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This is another difference - at the UCs the top GPA is 4.0. Hopefully the grad schools will take into account that some schools have a different GPA weighting than other schools.</p>
<p>I went to Columbia for grad school (in architecture) where we had no grades at all. Everything was pass/fail and if anyone failed I never heard about it. I've never worked so hard in my life. Maybe there's a lesson there?</p>