<p>So most of what I as a high school junior hear about Harvard—aside from that it exists and it's pretentious at times—revolves around two major themes: Harvard is cutthroat and Harvard practices grade inflation. Naturally, I'm left to ask if both are true. One or the other makes sense, but how are the two not mutually exclusive? In other words, why should undergrads compete fiercely for an average grade of A- when if they didn't they'd be left with something like a not-so-pitiful B+, a far cry from the standard of C as average? Or am I missing the point entirely: that the hardest part about Harvard is getting in and that once people are in, they feel the need to stand out just as they presumably did in high school and as such choosing to work in isolation rather than collaboration?</p>
<p>Whatever the answer is will clearly be a stereotype and not reflective of every individual Harvard student, but I'm interested in discussing the stereotype—one reflective of a significant majority of students—rather than the exception.</p>
<p>Jonah, the definition of stereotype is ‘an often unfair and untrue belief that many people have about all people or things with a particular characteristic’. There are about 6500 undergrads at Harvard and trying to find a behavior that is reflective of “a significant majority of students” is an exercise in futility. </p>
<p>is it true that the average gpa is like 3.6? why would students be inclined to try much even, part of the reason I want to go to harvard is so I can “slack off” (in relation to how hard I’d have to work at uc berkeley or MIT for example) and still end up with a higher gpa than I’d end up in other colleges (like the other 2 I mentioned). </p>
<p>@geo1113 That’s great. I visited UChicago a while back, and while I was there, I saw a couple of students selling shirts that said, “If I wanted an A, I would have gone to Harvard.” The visit was in part my motivation for asking.</p>
<p>@theanaconda @gibby Is Brown a valid slacker haven? Satisfactory/No Credit for the win!</p>
<p>@gibby I said in relation to other schools (of the same caliber). Kids probably end up having to work more for their grades at say MIT than harvard, the higher gpa’s and graduations rates at harvard would explain that (less fear of grading). You obviously have to work hard wherever you go. </p>
<p>^^ As students at Harvard and MIT are allowed to cross register for classes, I would think MIT’s “difficulty factor” or “work factor for grades” would be on par with Harvard’s, otherwise MIT students would be clammering for Harvard classes (at the supposedly easier school), and that’s not the case.</p>
<p>Oh, there’s quite a bit of cross-registration from MIT to Harvard for the purposes of grade-jimmying, particularly for people like pre-meds who need to take organic chemistry.</p>
<p>Harvard does have major grade inflation. I haven’t experienced this first hand yet (although I will since I will eventually teach for my PhD program I’m starting in the fall), I’ve heard this from several grad students who have TAd science classes. A guy who was an undergrad at my undergrad institution (another Ivy) said that they give around 50% As in the sciences as opposed to 30-33% at my alma mater. Another girl said that it is actually difficult to give a student below a B-, which is often the average grade in a class like organic chemistry at other top 20 schools like Cornell, Chicago, or Northwestern.</p>
<p>This doesn’t mean the classes aren’t difficult though. However, the grade inflation can be bad in a sense not for the top students, but the bottom and average students who are not graded as harshly as they deserve.</p>
<p>I’ve never met a Harvard College graduate who described the academic experience as “cutthroat.” If you want to understand the atmosphere at a college, start by listening to people who actually go/went there. There are lots of them on this board if you don’t know any in real life.</p>
<p>Harvard '13 here. I concur with Hanna that I’ve never heard other Harvard students call Harvard “cutthroat.” People at Harvard are competitive in the sense that each student is trying to do his/her best which sometimes involves being better than other people, but there’s no sense of hostility between students whatsoever.</p>
<p>Regarding grade inflation, Poeme’s point is spot on about how grade inflation affects the bottom students, not really the top. I don’t have stats to prove this, but it’s been my anecdotal experience that it’s hard to get an A, but even harder to get below a B-.</p>
<p>Harvard isn’t cuthroat at all but of course some students everywhere are ambitious and focused on grades, which is always too bad, but especially in the rich environment that is Harvard. Taking risks and learning how to fail gracefully are not common at many top schools. But students are interested in their friends’ studies and projects, there are cooperative study groups organized informally for exams, and the atmosphere is cooperative.</p>
<p>As for grade inflation: during the Vietnam war, grades were inflated to keep young men out of the draft. Much has been done to correct that. Grades will be high among a population that was bright enough to be admitted to Harvard. The course materials are difficult: more reading and denser reading, high expectations.</p>
<p>I don’t know where these stereotypes come from and why they persist. The other myth is that Harvard is not good for undergraduates (focus on undergrads was increased maybe 10-15 years ago) and that the social life isn’t good because everyone is so serious (also not true).</p>
<p>One other thing: the house system provides a supportive “home” for students with dean and masters on site, a dining hall for each house, events and parties for the house, and generally also contradicts the image you seem to have.</p>
<p>Learning to think critically is one skill you would learn at Harvard, including thinking critically about stereotypes.</p>
<p>Brown may be a slacker’s paradise, but not in the way you think. First, it is contrary to the type of overachiever student they admit. But I’m sure with the open curriculum you could construct a couple of years of classes that were ‘things you are good at’ + guts. I’m not sure what you would do with your major - pick an easy one I suppose. I bet there must be some famous student out there who tried to take everything S/Nc. But Brown does very well in grad/med/law admissions and I suppose you must think about your transcript. S/Nc allows you to tough out a gpa torpedoing course you might otherwise drop. My math/cs student took Mandarin and Russian S/Nc, while another family member skipped taking foreign language at Princeton to protect an EE gpa. You want to sneer and call that slackerdom be my guest. It was not a problem for PhD acceptances regardless.</p>
<p>I don’t know what the avg gpa is. I did see a medical school acceptance chart where admitted students got 3.67 vs the national avg of 3.63, however MCAT scores averaged much higher than the nat’l avg and acceptances were reported at twice the reported nat’l avg. Those med school slackers were too lazy to even bother to clear a better gpa in their easy A coursework!</p>
<p>Hey, it’s fun over here, the Brown forum is too boring.</p>
<p>@BrownParent I meant my “slacker haven” comment tongue-in-cheek. Thanks for the article, though! What I love about Brown is the idea that nearly all of the students in any given class are there because they want to be, not because they have to satisfy some obscure distribution requirement. The love of learning seems so genuine, the excitement about classes so sincere. The article you linked does leave me to ask one question: Why would anyone voluntarily spend an extra $60,000 to have both a BA and a BS? Was a quarter million dollar education not enough?</p>