<p>Yes and you have to try really really hard to get a 4.0 especially for premeds</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Yes and you have to try really really hard to get a 4.0 especially for premeds
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Actually, I think something like four people in the history of Harvard have EVER gotten 4.0's over all four years. The most recent one graduated only a few years ago, not sure when.</p>
<p>Point is, it's almost impossible.</p>
<p>"The most recent one graduated only a few years ago, not sure when."</p>
<p>The only two students to graduate with a 4.0 in the last two decades were a brother and sister who graduated a few years apart. That's a rate of about 1 4.0 per 16,500 graduates. You'd expect to see a much higher rate than that if A's truly were handed out like candy.</p>
<p>One of my acquaintances graduated with 31 A's and one A-minus (in freshman expository writing). Not only is this person brilliant, s/he has an absolutely insane perfectionist work ethic. That's what it takes to even come close to a 4.0.</p>
<p>That number is fairly consistent with A's being given out like candy. We know in advance that at least 90 percent of students at Harvard can be ruled out as 4.0 candidates as they lack the ability or the perfectionism, even with candy A's. So you are dealing with ten times smaller numbers. Let's say 1 perfect GPA per 1600 students and all the remaining 10 percent are trying to achieve this, taking 32 graded courses. That is the expected number of perfect transcripts given a 79.4 percent chance of an A for each of those hardworking students.</p>
<p>Edit (added): to get 1 per 16500, considering all students rather than a hypothetical striving 10 percent, would mean a 73.8 percent chance of an A per course.</p>
<p>While As are not rare, they are not given out as candy. A-s are far more common, in keeping with practice with schools such as Princeton AFTER the 35% rule was adopted. I actually do not believe that most classes give out as many as 35% As.</p>
<p>I'm not quite sure why people constantly see a need to attack Harvard.</p>
<p>Jealously my friend</p>
<p>
[quote]
While As are not rare, they are not given out as candy. A-s are far more common, in keeping with practice with schools such as Princeton AFTER the 35% rule was adopted. I actually do not believe that most classes give out as many as 35% As.
[/quote]
50% of grades were in the A-range (A and A-). However, Harvard has at least made the step of reducing honors from 91% to 50% of the graduating class. Of course, Harvard is certainly not unique in this regard. A study at UNC-Chapel Hill showed that 41% of grades were A's.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.org%5B/url%5D">www.gradeinflation.org</a> :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Siserune, I don't usually respond to posts like yours, but please don't try to bolster blatant generalizations with random numbers. It is patently false that only 10% of Harvard students are 'strivers' who are capable of a 4.0. You can't just say, "we know in advance that at least 90 percent of students at Harvard can be ruled out as 4.0 candidates." How do you know that? Have you talked with 90% of Harvard students? Do you go to Harvard? Who is this we? Do you have stats to back it up?</p>
<p>100% of the students at Harvard are in the top 9-10% of applicants in the US (as are those at similarly 'grade inflated' schools like Yale and Princeton). The vast majority are motivated, hard workers who do their classwork, study for tests, and bust their balls for A's. If you want to use numbers, look at the mandatory curve for core classes in which only the top 8-10% of a class is allowed to receive an A. Additionally, there isn't "one perfect GPA per 1600 students," read previous threads or telephone the registrar. Barry has been repeatedly quoted as saying that there have been only 4-6 4.0's to graduate during his tenure, his predecessor's tenure (Arlene Becella), and her predecessor's tenure (Georgene Herschbach).</p>
<p>and kemet, look at the source of gradeinflation.org's data. They're all self-reported studies, inherently skewing the subject data towards the students who will want to report their grades. Check my previous post or a US Department of Education study of actual transcripts (not student-reported grades) for a more realistic picture.
<a href="http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/gi.htm%5B/url%5D">http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/gi.htm</a></p>
<p>
I was referring to this:
<a href="http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/010233.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/010233.html</a></p>
<p>It's worth pointing out that Harvard has since changed its grading scale from the 15 point system and has seen a slight drop in grades.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=514228%5B/url%5D">http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=514228</a>
<a href="http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/10.12/01-histlit.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2006/10.12/01-histlit.html</a></p>
<p>
[quote]
It is patently false that only 10% of Harvard students are 'strivers' who are capable of a 4.0. You can't just say, "we know in advance that at least 90 percent of students at Harvard can be ruled out as 4.0 candidates."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>While my statement or something close to it is correct, it is an assumption for a back-of-the-envelope calculation, not a specific claim about the Harvard student body. To check the robustness of that "striving 10 percent" model, I posted a second calculation assuming that 100 percent of students are potential 4.0 candidates, and in either case a very high (much higher than the actual rate at Harvard) rate of A's would still be consistent with one perfect transcript per decade. That the registrar says it's actually more frequent only strengthens the point. You can refine the statistical model any way you like and the conclusion will be the same: the small number of perfect transcripts does NOT indicate an absence of grade inflation.</p>
<p>By the way, the statistical assumption was not that one in 1600 gets a perfect transcript, but that one in 1600 <em>of students in the top 10 percent</em> does so.</p>
<p>"We know in advance that at least 90 percent of students at Harvard can be ruled out as 4.0 candidates as they lack the ability or the perfectionism"</p>
<p>That's "not a specific claim about the Harvard student body"? Please.</p>
<p>Furthermore, your model supposes that within the "striving 10%", A's are distributed at random. That's absurd. The more A's you get, the more likely you are to get more of them. A student who has a 4.0 after 24 courses is far more likely to get a 4.0 in the next 8 courses than a student with a 3.85 after 24 courses, even though they are both in the top 10%.</p>
<p>It should be obvious, in case the words "back of envelope calculation" did not leap out at you, that this is just a crude explanation of a very simple point: the rarity of attaining 4.0 has much more to do with the number of courses being high (32 or more) than the presence or absence of grade inflation. No refinement of the calculations to take non-independence into account is likely to change that, but feel free to surprise us with a better model.</p>
<p>Regarding the 10 percent figure, we know that after the freshman year roughly 50 students, or around 3 per cent, receive the grade-based Detur Prize, and not all of them have 4.0. We know that 20 people a year or so get Junior Phi Beta Kappa, of which under 100 (or if you like, 160 --- ten percent) were a priori realistic candidates to achieve that. Ten percent is a rather conservative assumption for any statistical calculation, but the conclusions don't change in the least if you assume 15 or 20 percent: having one perfect transcript per decade is quite compatible with grade inflation.</p>
<p>Checking the website, the Detur is not the prize I had in mind (it is awarded to 10 percent at sophomore year not freshman), but the point is the same for any given prize cutoff catching all the 4.0-holders at a point prior to graduation; the number will be small and allows one to quantify the realistic size of the starting pool of potential 4.0 candidates.</p>
<p>It seems to be a commonly accepted fact that Harvard students are the top (% in the nation--in terms of how bright they are. I will agree that Harvard students are certainly intelligent people, and many of them brilliant, however, many acceptances are based primarily upon personal characteristics and/or life circumstances. Thus it is impossible to generalize Harvard kids as the brightest 9% in the nation; thats simply not accurate. IMO, this overturns any arguments in favor of grade-inflation at Harvard...actually, I'm against grade inflation in general, it completely devalues education. People don't feel the need to work as hard as they could up to their highest potential because they know they can get away with the low curve etc.</p>
<br>
<blockquote> <p>People don't feel the need to work as hard as they could up to their highest potential because they know they can get away with the low curve etc.<<</p> </blockquote>
<br>
<p>Maybe true in theory, but my observation of Harvard is that the students there work very hard.</p>
<p>I have never heard of anyone with a 4.0 at Harvard, other than some freshmen. Nearly nobody ever graduates with a 4.0, and I think people will agree with me here. Harvard students do work hard, but Harvard isn't all about academics. I don't believe you can fully enjoy Harvard if you're constantly doing work with that 4.0 in sight. A 3.5 is absolutely fantastic at Harvard, and you'll get much more out of the opportunities here. If you're coming to Harvard looking to get a 4.0, I don't think it's the school for you, because you'd just be taking somebody else's spot who would get more out of it than you would.</p>
<p>Amen to that, chrisiskey. A 3.5 is really good and it does show that you put in a lot of effort into your classes. Students who have excellent GPAs (3.9+, which are literally the top 5% of the graduating class) are students who you would really consider geniuses that really work hard too. However, most Harvard students are hard-working and try the best that they can.</p>