Basically all the threads I’ve been looking at are 2005, 2002, etc on grade inflation/deflation at colleges–I’d say that’s pretty old. Can I ask some CCers to pitch in on a list of schools with grade deflation/inflation? Here’s mine:
Inflation: Basically all the Ivies, excluding Princeton, including Brown (probably has the most inflation), Rice (?)
Deflation: Swarthmore, Princeton, MIT, Harvey Mudd, JHU, Northwestern, WUSTL, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Emory (?)
General trends: Tech schools and top-tier state schools are deflated, LACs and Ivys are inflated (obviously exceptions exist)
Schools I’m unsure about: Williams, Amherst
This is just stuff I picked up from off the web. Let me know if anything’s wrong with it.
I know that people will read this and immediately say, “you need to work hard/deflation doesn’t matter/don’t cheat the system.” I respect your opinions, but please don’t post them here. I’ve read them all a hundred times through the college search process. I’m not saying that I want an easy break, but grades DO matter, especially for a pre-med like me. And I’ve worked my butt off in high school and that’s not going to stop in college. Honestly, I think more pre-med applicants need to know about deflation, and how important it is to get a good GPA–med schools literally don’t care where you went, as long as you have a high GPA and MCAT score. (I could go for hours on this topic, but I won’t).
Back to the topic–CCers, can we make this list bigger? It would be great to have a mini database here for future/current applicants so we/they don’t have to individually click on each school (gradeinflation.com) or tour multiple threads for this information. Thank you! 
In general (very roughly), public universities have a higher propensity of grade deflation while the opposite tends to be true for private universities. There are plenty of exceptions to this, however.
@yikesyikesyikes I agree! One quick question–do you know how deflated UT is (especially for the sciences)?
I do not have much intimate knowledge of UT, unfortunately.
Can anyone point to hard data about grade inflation/deflation? I know certain schools have reputations, but I wonder how much those reputations are consistent with current empirical evidence. I’ve seen this website but it only goes through 2013: http://www.gradeinflation.com/
@Corinthian as far as I know, that’s the only one with hard data. You could look up each college individually on google
However, I’d say that reputations for colleges are pretty accurate–even if there’s not actually deflation, courses will feel very tough and have a weed-out quality.
Well looking at that website, let’s compare Pomona which has something of a reputation for grade inflation with Swarthmore which definitely has a reputation for grade deflation. In 2013, the last year for which data is posted, the median Pomona GPA was 3.59 and the median Swat GPA was 3.56. In 2009 they both had the same median GPA: 3.53. Wellesley, on the other hand, had a median GPA of 3.35 in 2013. I’ve tried searching for more up to date information but haven’t found it. Hopefully some CC data experts will come to the rescue.
I’m not sure how we can really say a school has deflation or inflation based on average GPA since there are many factors that go into that - inputs (student stats from HS), course choice, etc.
Some students might do better in a very large lectures with multiple choice exams, some might do better in a smaller class with more comprehensive evaluations (blue book long answer questions, etc). Some classes curve to limit As, some curve up only, some don’t at all. This is sometimes college-specific but might also vary class by class.