<p>I talked to a friend at Columbia yesterday who said that grade inflation there is pretty crazy, and that got me wondering. What other schools grade inflate a lot?</p>
<p>Harvard does it a lot, partially due to a strong student body but more so do to not wanting to make the moron sons of senators feel unhappy</p>
<p>Im glad Columbia does it, that means if I get in ED There Ill have a better academic college transcript =D!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!</p>
<p>All the Ivies, except Cornell, are NOTORIOUS for rampant grade inflation. However, you must consider that you are among some pretty smart kids and someone has to get C's or the bell curve fails.</p>
<p>Though at Stanford several years ago, in the MBA and Law Schools they discovered that EVERY student had straight A's....until they got busted doing that.</p>
<p>The better question is which schools have the biggest grade DEFLATION? (as in reality based grading).</p>
<p>I think the Bell Curve for Ivy League and other top schools is stupid. Everyone there is a genius, so just give them a A for their deserved work instead of forcing them artificially down to a C just to fit with some stupid idea of a "bell curve"</p>
<p>as for inflation, i hear Ivys except cornell. For deflation, i heard some of the worst are cornell, Chicago, UToronto, and McGill</p>
<p>There is absolutely no way to know the answer to this question. To do that, you would need an absolute set of standards adhered to absolutely across all colleges. I can assure you from experience and talking to other faculty members that it's rare to have a set of standards even among people teaching two different sections of the same class.</p>
<p>I think it's a given that grades have crept up since the Vietnam era in most places. But the degree of grade inflation is tougher to nail from school to school.</p>
<p>Here is your best source for comparison:
<a href="http://gradeinflation.com/%5B/url%5D">http://gradeinflation.com/</a></p>
<p>That website seems outdated.</p>
<p>How about top-not non-Ivy schools?
-Johns Hopkins
-Northwestern
-WashU
-Duke
etc...</p>
<p>While it may not be perfect, and I wish the author would update the info, I think it provides plenty of useful data. I think it is pretty safe to say that when the average graduating GPA at Duke is 3.38 in 2002, and has hovered around that level for several years, that the current GPA is at least 3.38.</p>
<p>Thanks Lesser. That was a useful link.</p>
<p>firied:</p>
<p>on another thread, a poster added a link that showed that even Cornell had ~40% A's and A- grades.</p>
<p>I believe that link was for Cornell's other schools-- remember, Cornell is not only its college of arts and sciences-- and I seem to remember that the hotelies and AEM kids get high grades, but I don't remember seeing any CAS data that was that high.</p>
<p>At the same time, I also have to bring up Tarhunt's point again-- I don't think any school has consistent grading, and in my college experience at one of the "deflated" schools, I earned some easy A's and some hard B-'s. Then again, I have to take my own strengths and weaknesses into account-- my "A" classes were in my favorite subject.</p>
<p>The grading curve is toughest at large state schools--most classes require the student to score above 95% to get an A with no curve to increase the number of As.</p>
<p>frasifrasi,
For public universities, one explanation may be that, given their much broader quality of student distribution, it seems more appropriate that there be multiple tiers to their grading. By contrast, more selective colleges with students that are statistically stronger would be expected to have higher average GPAs.</p>
<p>I think grade inflation doesn't really apply to the sciences as much as it applies to the humanities due to bell curve grading in many of these classes. I think at any school from Ivies to the a low tier college, science students have to work hard to get A's. I'd like to find a school where the engineers aren't constantly studying, the premeds aren't sweating bullets, etc.</p>
<p>Also don't forget students at top schools are there because they are great test takers and are grade conscious. These habits and abilities aren't going to change from the move from high school to undergrad. So while grades might be inflated, one also has to take into account that many of these students know how to get A's and will do everything it takes to get an A.</p>
<p>PRINCETON
CORNELL </p>
<p>= MAJOR GRADE DEFLATION.</p>
<p>princeton actually caps 35% A range which really SUCKS. In the words of one of my princeton friends, you walk into a seminar with 10 brilliant people and the first thing you think isn't "Wow, what a great learning atmosphere", but instead it's something along the lines of "f*** only 3.5 people in this class will get A's".</p>
<p>All the other ivies inflate like crazy.</p>
<p>^ rofl, I guess those are two schools I won't be applying to...</p>
<p>So why make it easier for students in competitive classes/schools to get an A if they are qualified in the first place? for instance, in the calc class i took, you needed to get above 94% once all the components (hw, exams) were added up to get an A and there was no curving to increase the number of high scorerers, while in the honors version, you barely needed a 90% to get an A--the same for the examples aforementioned where top schools want to award high grades.</p>
<p>Princeton had really nice grade inflation as did Stanford until a few years ago some people complained about elitism and a bunch of crap, so they decided to go the other way completely and establish quotas on how many people you gotta fail, give B's , C's , and A's, so even if you have a class of supergeniuses you gotta pwn-fail some of em. Cured cancer? FAILLLLLLEURREEEEE</p>
<p>I always heard this was somewhat of an exaggeration. The Princeton policy is a target for the class, and not a rigid delineation of grade distributions. The policy is meant for classes with 30-100 students, where everyone should not be given As. Unfortunately, not all professors apply the rules the same. As far as I read in the Daily Princetonian, the grade deflation system is still just a target, although a heavily encouraged target.</p>