<p>syneria, i think sakky was talking about university of colorado/ colorado state university, since that's what the OP was considering? but i'm sure the same thing can be applied to the university of california....btw i'm going to ucsd too next year, i mean as long as you study well and make an effort to understand everything i'm sure you'll get pretty decent grades....</p>
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I would love to see some evidence for the whole Ivy-grade-inflation claim. As best I can tell, gpa's are quite similar at most elite private colleges, Ivy or otherwise, and quite high. They are lower at state universities, but the elite privates have higher-scoring students in the admit pool. So the grades should be higher. If the difference is greater than explained by the entry characteristics, and the mix of majors, then no one has shown it, and there is plenty of data out there.
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<p>There is not 'plenty' of data out there. Most of the data is obviously hidden by the schools themselves. </p>
<p>The data that I can offer you is anecdotal, but nevertheless sufficient amounts of it exist to draw a tentative conclusion. Ask yourself - why is it that at a school like MIT, a culture of 'student persecution' reigns among the student body? For example, at MIT, you are constantly barraged with phrases like IHTFP, of "you against the school", of "drinking from the firehouse", with the symbolism of wearing a school ring with a beaver (deemed the "Brass Rat") defecating on you as a symbol of how MIT is treating you as a student. Why do any of these things exist if MIT wasn't in fact a very difficult school, and in particular, more difficult than its peer Ivies? You never hear of any MIT student or graduate laughing about how easy it was or how you didn't have to do much to graduate. </p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHTFP#IHTFP%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHTFP#IHTFP</a></p>
<p>Anecdotally speaking, if you ask a bunch of MIT students whether Harvard or MIT is harder, they are almost certainly going to say MIT. However, if you ask a bunch of Harvard students whether Harvard or MIT is harder, they are ALSO probably going to say MIT. </p>
<p>Granted, none of this stuff systematically proves that MIT is harder than Harvard. But you add it all up and the preponderance of evidence is clear. Let's face it. MIT has an extraordinarily rigorous and tough reputation, and I have not come across anything that disabuses anybody of that reputation. </p>
<p>The same thing could be said for schools such as Caltech and other extremely difficult schools. All of these schools are extremely selective, probably more selective than most of the Ivies. Yet their reputations for rigor and difficulty also precede them. That means that the preponderance of evidence indicates that, if nothing else, the Ivies are grade inflated compared to MIT or Caltech. </p>
<p>I personally would love to see some evidence that indicates that MIT/Caltech are really not that hard, or that the grading there is comparable to that at the Ivies. </p>
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In a study of performance in medical school, it was found that MCAT score and college GPA predicted med school grades, but that selectivity of undergraduate college did not. If the most selective colleges are grade inflated, then selectivity of college should have been a negative predictor of med school grades. It was not.
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<p>This is irrelevant to the discussion here. We're not talking about the grades you get while in med-school. We're talking about GETTING IN to med school. It doesn't matter if you could have gotten top grades while in med-school if you can't get into med-school in the first place. Not to drag MIT/Caltech back into the discussion again, but I have the strong feeling that plenty of MIT/Caltech students could get top med-school grades, but can't get admitted to med-school because their undergrad grades at MIT/Caltech are too low.</p>
<p>afan,</p>
<p>Part of the problem is that it isn't more selective schools being grade inflated. CalTech, MIT, Cornell (by reputation, at least), are deflated. Stanford, Duke, Harvard are (again, at least by reputation) inflated. So you see that in this case, selectivity wouldn't correlate with inflation, and therefore not with GPA, and therefore would not throw off the GPA-selectivity-performance correlations.</p>
<p>Bigredmed thanks for your reply. It clears much up for me. =)</p>