<p>A lot of arguing back and forth in this thread, but no one has really gotten to the root of Cornell’s fierce reputation. The root of Cornell’s reputation as the “easiest Ivy to get into, but the hardest to graduate from” can be traced to the over representation of engineering and hard science majors on campus relative to other the other Ivy League colleges. A peripheral cause is (as CayugaRed2005 and norcalguy have already pointed out) the fact that the Cornell student body is, on the margins, less intelligent than those of its peer schools. </p>
<p>Major for major, Cornell’s grading scale is nearly identical to those of Princeton, Penn, and Columbia. At the 100 and 200 course level, each of the four schools curve to a B+ in humanities and the liberal arts, to a B in the hard sciences, and to a B- in engineering. At the 300 and 400 level, nearly all course are curved to an A- regardless of major. Harvard, Yale, Brown, and Dartmouth generally set there 100 and 200 level curves half a letter grade higher than Cornell, Princeton, Penn, and Columbia. </p>
<p>Because Cornell has a higher proportion of students in engineering and the hard sciences, its students encounter a stricter grading curve during their first two years, on average, then those at Princeton/Penn/Columbia. If Cornell’s graduation rate was as high as Princeton’s or Penn’s the average GPA at Cornell would be about 0.1 - 0.2 points lower (again, this is only because there are more engineers and hard science majors, not because the grading is more difficult). However, because Cornell’s graduation rate is ~5-9% lower than those of Princeton/Penn/Columbia (here is where the marginally less intelligent student body comes into play), those with the lowest GPA’s at Cornell are less likely to graduate . After you remove the bottom 5% or so of GPA’s, those who don’t graduate, the average GPA at graduation becomes identical to that of Princeton/Penn/Columbia.</p>