<p>Collegeparent-Do you understand how curve grading works? I attend Cornell University (supposedly a non-grade inflated school) and in many classes the medians are curved to a A- or a B+ meaning half the students receive A's or A-'s. On the other hand, you can have an uncurved class with especially hard midterms that everyone receive 60's on. Then the mean for the class would be a D. So whether a class is curved or not does not determine how difficult the class is. It's the mean grade in the class that's important.</p>
<p>BTW: If you notice, for nearly every school on that site, there has been an upward trend of mean GPA's so it is unlikely Stanford's mean GPA is lower now than it was in the 1990s.</p>
<p>Schools with larger engineering departments have lower average GPA's</p>
<p>I heard Cornells ave. GPA was like a 3.1, while Duke's is 3.4-3.5, and Columbia's is like 3.3 from visits</p>
<p>Cornell has the highest number of engineers - I would say, if you want a high GPA and don't care about learning about it, steer clear of engineering</p>
<p>there are prestigious schools who boast 100% acceptance rates because teachers refuse to write the "bad students" recs. A parent posted/mentioned it in a thread about her s/d in UPenn, and i heard it also happens quite a lot at JHU.</p>
<p>If an MIT/Caltech student with 3.4 is going to be rejected while a Brown student is going to be accepted with a 3.7 then there is a good reason to look for a school that inflates grade if all you care about is getting into med school.</p>
<p>Does grade inflation necessarily mean a higher average GPA? Consider a school like Georgia Tech, which has an increasing median GPA, yet it is still under 3.0. Now my question is this: Is a high everage GPA a good thing or a bad thing for students there? Yes, they will probably earn a better GPA, yet the classes median would also be higher. Is the GA Tech student with a 3.5 weaker than the Stanford student with a 3.5 when trying to gain admission to graduate school, even though their GPA may have been harder to earn and farther above the classes everage?</p>
<p>Does anybody have a list of school with highest average GPA's?</p>
<p>Harvard is known to have quite a bit of grade inflation. Cornell students even shout "grade inflation!" at Harvard's fan section at the men's ice hockey games. Also, a quote from a thread on the Harvard forum about grade inflation. </p>
<p>I believe this was from a Boston Globe article...</p>
<p>"Trevor Cox is in the throes of his greatest challenge at Harvard University: A senior honors thesis about Abraham Lincoln's wartime attorney general. It's exciting and gut-churning, he says; it's also his first Harvard paper that doesn't feel like a sham.</p>
<p>''I've coasted on far higher grades than I deserve,'' said Cox, who has a B-plus average and leads Harvard's student volunteer group. ''It's scandalous. You can get very good grades, and earn honors, without ever producing quality work.''</p>
<p>"The humanities are indeed a harbor for A's, which account for half of all the grades given in those classes; humanities professors teach about 30 percent of Harvard students. The hard sciences enroll a similar proportion and give more B's, while the social sciences enroll about 50 percent and fall toward the middle of grading trends.</p>
<p>Alexandra Mack, a 1991 anthropology major, received a C in calculus and a B-minus in Stephen Jay Gould's evolution class, but recalls breezing through one humanities exam by simply regurgitating the professor's ideas.</p>
<p>''The comments back from the professor were <code>great insights, great thoughts,' '' Mack said. ''I felt,</code>I'm glad you think I'm brilliant, but c'mon.' '' "</p>