<p>I was just wondering...would a 3.8 from Harvard be better than a 3.8 from Dartmouth? Or more so....would a 3.8 from Harvard be better than a 4.0 from Dartmouth?</p>
<p>A degree from one isn’t a whole lot better than a degree from the other. GPA doesn’t matter a whole lot unless you are aiming for graduate school.</p>
<p>Harvard’s prolly alot easier - know anyone who has flunked out of Harvard? They don’t exists. Cornell on the other hand…</p>
<p>Harvard’s also ridiculously rich. Notice the huge correlation between college rank and endowment size? Hmm…</p>
<p>More or less, the top 10 or so schools are essentially the same. Whats different are how people “precieve” the degree…</p>
<p>Getting a degree with honors from Harvard will help you a lot if you want to go to Harvard for a graduate degree. But it’s not like a Dartmouth degree will hurt your chances at all.</p>
<p>Harvard and Dartmouth both have ridiculous grade inflation.</p>
<p>Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, Princeton, they all have huge grade inflation.</p>
<p>Here’s the advice of a kid that turned down a prepaid education at a state school for big time prestige:</p>
<p>Don’t go anywhere you can’t afford. Don’t go anywhere you don’t think will be comfortable. Don’t get caught up in prestige. Notice that not every successful person went to an ivy league school.</p>
<p>10 years years later you’ll be able to brag to all your colleagues that you have a respected name on a piece of sheepskin hanging in your office, but I’m not entirely sure it will be worth it.</p>
<p>The diffference is name.</p>
<p>At the age of five, I knew the names of only a few colleges: tOSU, my parents’ alma maters, and Harvard. That perception of “prestige”, even instilled into children of such a young age, is IMO a big factor in maintaining its reputation.</p>
<p>I would say even the prestige isn’t that different. I mean, Stanford isn’t Ivy and it’s definitely ranked one or two behind Harvard - but everyone here has heard of Harvard and no one has any idea where I’m going when I mention Stanford (some people do catch onto the football).</p>
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<p>If, as you say, everyone has heard of Harvard but not Stanford not so much, then there probably is a difference in prestige. Simple fame is a large component to prestige. Prestige is all about impressing people, which is why it is considered to be shallow. But who is going to be impressed with something they haven’t heard of?</p>
<p>The OP is looking at this completely the wrong way.</p>
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<p>NOT TRUE. Just establishing that. The grading policy restricts As to one-third of the student population. Given the strength of the student body, that could mean 93 is a B+, as it is in some courses. On the other hand, 85 might be A in others.</p>
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<p>I agree with this statement. On the other hand, Yale and Princeton in my experience get the same reaction Harvard does for the most part. When I told people that I got into Stanford early, there was congratulations followed by “You know, that’s a great school!” whenever people asked if I had college plans sorted out. My HYP friends and I have never had that addendum when we state where we’re going because, I conjecture, HYP has already established themselves as “great school.”</p>
<p>haha your friends sound like ******s. tell them they havent been accepted yet</p>
<p>Honestly I don’t think GPA would be the determining factor in which is better out of the examples you’ve presented:
The examples you’ve given are from two great schools that are so minor that there will likely be other determing factors than the slight difference in GPA’s.</p>
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<p>Grade inflation has less to do with the difficulty of earning top grades than about avoiding flunking out, and let’s face it, at Princeton, as long as you do a bare modicum of work, you won’t flunk out. You may earn mediocre grades, but you’re still going to pass and you’re still going to graduate.</p>
<p>Contrast that with schools such as MIT or Caltech where flunking out is a perennial danger. I suspect that most students at those schools would gladly trade their grading schemes for Princeton’s.</p>
<p>Princeton restricts As to a third of the population, and we’re celebrating that? That almost sounds like they’re grading on the curve. If no one does exceptionally well in the class, then we just give an A to the guy that did the best?</p>
<p>What happened to the times when As were reserved for excellence? That’s a bygone era in the Ivy League. Look at some of the smaller liberal arts schools that are on par or just a bit below Ivy League in terms of prestige. They don’t care if students have 2.5s, so their classes are very difficult, and your average freshman carries a 2.8 into sophomore year… unless they put serious, serious work in it to earn As. In my opinion, the kid pulling a 3.4 there is doing just as well as an HYP kid with a 3.8.</p>
<p>“Princeton restricts As to a third of the population, and we’re celebrating that?”</p>
<p>That’s actually a guideline. Professors have the freedom to assign As beyond that arbitrary demarcation.</p>
<p>“Look at some of the smaller liberal arts schools… They don’t care if students have 2.5s, so their classes are very difficult…” </p>
<p>Large universities “don’t care.” Liberal arts colleges do. By your reasoning, since liberal arts colleges care about the individual performance of struggling students, classes at those schools must be very easy. It happens that struggling students have the attention of a patient and understanding administration that is willing to work with these students on a one-on-one basis so that they get back on the right track. Classes at liberal arts colleges aren’t necessarily more difficult than the ones at large universities, and there is just as much grade inflation at these small institutions.</p>
<p>“… your average freshman carries a 2.8 into sophomore year… unless they put serious, serious work in it to earn As.”</p>
<p>Source?</p>
<p>“In my opinion, the kid pulling a 3.4 there is doing just as well as an HYP kid with a 3.8.”</p>
<p>Except we’re discussing the difference between a 3.8 at H/Y and a 4.0 at Dartmouth/Columbia, not the difference between a 3.4 at W/S and a 3.8 at H/Y.</p>
<p>I’m excluding Princeton because steps have been taken to deflate grades, and I’m excluding Amherst because grade inflation is a real problem there, as it is at H/Y/etc.</p>
<p>Everyone is still ignoring that the OP is asking a question which clearly is framed in a way that is not constructive when choosing a college.</p>
<p>Then we’re all making lots of assumptions about what the purpose of grades are and what they’re meant to indicate and the universality of those ideas, but that’s a separate discussion.</p>
<p>KWU-</p>
<p>I’m speaking from my personal experience on this one. Thank you for clearing up the Princeton grading thing, that’s reassuring.</p>
<p>But when I say that liberal arts colleges don’t care about your gpa, that’s coming from my personal experiences, and those of close friends of mine, primarily from three top 15 LACs and 2 top 15 Universities.</p>
<p>We do have a patient administration, but they’re not coming to us. If we go looking for help, we can find it without much effort, but they aren’t preoccupied with our gpa. You know you’re not getting any breaks when you walk into your history class on day one and your professor says “I won’t make an effort to get to know you unless you come to me, and unless you are an exceptional student, I probably won’t remember your name.” What I meant was while they are willing to help, at the end of the day they aren’t going to shed a tear over marking a C- if that’s what you earned.</p>
<p>So far as the 2.8, that’s the number for a first-year average that our President gave when he was talking to a group of parents.</p>
<p>Although I do realize that is off topic, so I’ll leave it at that.</p>
<p>I think prestige is different for people in different demographics/geographic locations. The average lay person agrees Harvard is the best school, but will probably differ as to the second best- Princeton, Yale, and Stanford are all thrown around.
Someone mentioned that Stanford wasn’t a big deal in their area and their classmates hadn’t heard of it…well, I live on the west coast, and here, it’s considered the equivalent of Harvard. SO, it all depends on arbitrary factors.</p>
<p>My neice was told that her HIGH SCHOOL “a” from a big local public school was “not the same” as an “A” earned at a good local private school. Makes sense. MAYBE should could still pull off the A if she went to the private…but maybe not…there is no proof of that. (she was told this by a college counselor, and was admitted to our state Uni - full ride).</p>
<p>Fast forward to grad school and she’s in Columbia law school. Her professor tells the class on day one that all students will get As. Because, if they’ve made it this far they SHOULD be getting an A and deserve an A, so they’ll get As…regardless. I’m sure there is truth in that, but…what’s the incentive for anyone to show up for class or do the research? Guess he assumes, hopefully correctly, that this type over achiever (Ivy Law) would not slack off.</p>