<p>does anyone have some idea as to which universites grade the hardest? where is it most difficult to get a GPA in the 3.5-4.0 range?</p>
<p>Grades are largely dependent on major, and to a greater extent the professors you end up with, so this question has absolutely no answer. There are a number of places with reputations for grade deflation, and I'm sure plenty of people will post those.</p>
<p>Schools with high proportions of engineering students (eg MIT) will typically have lower GPA's simply because a greater number of credit hours are taken in the hard sciences and engineering disciplines.</p>
<p>UChicago, Reed, Swarthmore, Princeton, William and Mary, Wake Forest, and I don't know who else.</p>
<p>I heard Berkeley was pretty hard!?</p>
<p>That's because it is huge, not because of grade deflation.</p>
<p>Boston University's average GPA is something like a 3.04. It really depends on your department, but I think a lot of professors are reluctant to give out A's because they see the relative lack of grade inflation as an important part of the school.</p>
<p>Its tedious but I am sure this would answer your question: If you go to ratemyprofessor.com just look at the ease column for say all the profs. whose last name starts with an A. Just by looking at that factor alone its pretty much how you apply your logic to figure out what and if students find this professor, department, class or institution difficult in the grading process. Also look at the student body...do they practically live and eat their courses each day and night and still make a B or C or are they slackers who spend their time say studying for material for one to two hours and make a C when they had the potential to make an A. Basically long story short...all things can/could practically be misleading or it could be a general stat that may or may not apply to all individuals.</p>
<p>Davidson/W&M/Stanford/Chicago</p>
<p>I heard Lehigh was pretty tough. I go to Princeton and its tough here too.</p>
<p>Yeah, didn't they just start the quintile ranking or something of the sort?</p>
<p>aren't curves used a lot?</p>
<p>A lot of classes are graded on curves, but that really doesn't mean anything--hitting the mean on every single test could land you with a B- in one class, a B+/A- in another. It all depends on the professor, and honestly, sometimes taking the same class in a different quarter with a different prof will result in a different curve and higher or lower class grades. I've also been in classes where the "curve" meant that on a 100 point test, your score was calculated as (your score)/X, where X was the mean of the top ten highest scores. If that came out to be above 90%, you get an A; above 80% is a B, and so on. In a biology class with 300 pre-meds and a class average of 75% on most tests, that essentially meant your grade was out of a 96 or so instead of 100--which pretty much sucked for all but maybe 25 people!</p>
<p>In general, I think pre-med classes and some intro engineering classes are graded the hardest at all universities, while classes like polysci or English tend to have more generous grading policies. But then again, it's also more possible to get a REALLY high grade in a techy class like math or physics, because there's only one right answer to every question; in classes where papers make up most of your grade, it's much harder to get a nearly perfect score because the subjective nature of paper grading makes it difficult for profs to decide what exactly is an A+ paper and what's just an A. I obviously can't speak for all schools, but that's how it tends to be at Stanford, anyway. Hope that helps!</p>
<p>I again have to echo the importance of professor...</p>
<p>Perfect example:</p>
<p>My organic chemistry prof graded on a curve, with the class average being a C+, and only about 6 people out of 200 getting an A. Every test I had from him was the worth the most points I'd ever had on any test. Our first exam was worth 250 points, then 480, 690, and a 1000 point final. Second semester, the exams were even larger. This was done to facilitate his curve, and accentuate the natural breaks in the grouping of scores. While this certainly made the tests harder, the man was a phenomenal professor who still remains one of my favorites.</p>
<p>The other organic professor whose section was taught next door one hour later than my section gave multiple choice tests, each 50 points, with no curves or scales. The prof was not good, but still roughly 60% of the class received A's or B's. </p>
<p>While this is an extreme example, there are certainly others from my undergrad experience (like my 20th Century Fiction prof who gave B's for getting 6 out of 12 points on the quizzes over the books we read), that further prove my point. I'm sure that many of the other college students can point to at least one example in which their grade (good or bad) had more to do with the professor than the actual work done.</p>
<p>6 A's given out of 200...that sucks</p>
<p>the UC's are pretty tough.</p>