<p>They are all at university now. What are you talking about?</p>
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<p>Grade inflation deals with grades, not flunking out. If the school gave everyone Fs but never kicked anyone out, they would still have grade deflation.</p>
<p>Also, mentioning Princeton in with Harvard and Yale where 50%+ in some years get As is absurd, especially since Princeton is actively and publicly deflating grades.</p>
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<p>I’m not a spokesman for the university or the administration’s grading policy.</p>
<p>I have never heard of a single school that allowed people to stay who had straight F’s, so these attributes are entirely equivalent.</p>
<p>But even if it were not, then that only changes the definition slightly. After all, how many students at Princeton actually earn F’s? I’m going to go with ‘zero’, and I doubt that I’m way off. If practically nobody at Princeton actually ever earns an F, then it’s safe to say that Princeton is indeed grade inflated.</p>
<p>In contrast, I know one guy at a school that shall remain unnamed whose GPA at one point was literally a 0.5 (half D’s, half F’s).</p>
<p>Except that everyone and their brother graduates with honors from Harvard. Their Latin Honors start at a 3.4 minimum (at many UCs that are known for grade DEflation, it begins at a 3.65).</p>
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<p>Welcome to a thing called “rigor,” kiddo. That should be the expectation at a school like Princeton, not the exception.</p>
<p>That’s a separate line of thinking that I’m not bothering to go down. By definition, grade deflation deals with deflated grades. If you want to tie that to flunking out, that’s your prerogative. But that equivalence still stems from the true definition of grade deflation.</p>
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<p>Ew. “Kiddo?” What is this, a forum for snarky and condescending remarks that serve no purpose and are entirely irrelevant? Consider it a rhetorical question. Nevertheless, I point you to my prior statement:</p>
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<p>I have no opinion here, so please don’t associate one with me.</p>
<p>Yes; a degree from Harvard is better than a degree from other ivy schools, but not by much compared to Yale and Princeton. The reason for that is Harvard’s prestige is unbeatable. (But Yale and Princeton are right next to Harvard in prestige.) </p>
<p>When you say you’re from Harvard, you can put a period right there. No more explanation is needed after mentioning Harvard. When you say you went to Yale, some people would ask in return: did you make it at Harvard? or, why didn’t you chose Harvard instead? etc, etc… When you say you went to Dartmouth, the people would generally assume that you didn’t make it at Harvard. </p>
<p>Harvard is Harvard because of its unparalleled prestige. Its prestige is next to none. Not even Oxford can claim to be as much as prestigious these days, more so claim more prestigious and Oxford was founded several hundred years before Harvard was born. </p>
<p>Harvard does not exactly the school the provides the best training ground for future careers, as it’s not the only school that provides the best instructions and discipline to students. For example, UC Berkeley, Stanford, Caltech and MIT are better schools for engineering than Harvard. But people look up to Harvard very highly because of its name. Without the Harvard prestige, Harvard would just be another Dartmouth or Brown or Duke.</p>
<p>The definition of grade deflation does have to do with deflated grades. Because the GPA of the average college student around the country is around a 3.0-3.2, an A will help you far less than an F will hurt you. In other words, the far more salient factor that determines grade deflation is not how easy it is to obtain A’s, but rather how easy it is to avoid F’s - which is most readily achieved by simply attending a school where F’s are practically never handed out in the first place.</p>
<p>(Thanks to the CC participant who first posted this link, which I promptly bookmarked.) What matters for your specific study goals and career goals may have nothing to do with what someone else thinks. Getting into any highly selective college is the first challenge.</p>
<p>The OP is obviously a ill-informed high school student who has no idea what having a 4.0 at any Ivy means.</p>
<p>Harvard is the best overall. Period. However, top student at all the Ivies are comparable. So, no one will choose an 3.8 from Harvard over a 4.0 from any Ivy while considering only the GPA.</p>
<p>IvyPBear: I’d agree, with the exception of MIT. People <em>do</em> choose MIT over Harvard (or don’t even apply to Harvard), if they definitely plan to go into engineering or a technical field. Within engineering, MIT simply has a better reputation than Harvard.</p>
<p>You know, I graduated Brown and the response is never “Why didn’t you get into Harvard?” (I never even applied and wouldn’t want to go there). I don’t know amongst what group of people you guys are interacting with, but HYP in the Northeast doesn’t have the kind of status, in my experience, which suggest that if you could go you have to go there.</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>
<p>The incentive is to learn the material, to pass the bar, to make law review, etc.</p>
<p>Shhh. You don’t actually have to know what you’re talking about to post whatever you want based on your own perceptions. Princeton has done quite a bit to fight inflation rather successfully, if you agree with a certain, narrow vision of the meaning of grades.</p>
<p>33% A’s can hardly be characterized as being ‘pushed down’. I can think of quite a few students who would love to have been in classes where 33% of grades were A’s.</p>
<p>I also wonder why that same mentality never seems to apply in other disciplines. For example, by the same reasoning, engineering grad students at MIT should receive all A’s, right? After all, if you’ve made it to grad school at arguably the best engineering school in the world, you deserve straight A’s, no? </p>
<p>Yet somehow that logic didn’t seem to work out in practice.</p>
<p>That’s actually very reasonable where the average student at the school would likely pull straight As in schools with less competitive bodies.</p>
<p>And this is actually not even relevant – Princeton has been fighting grade inflation, period. Your prior argument was that because it’s hard to flunk out, there’s no grade deflation. This is a completely different line of reasoning that I’m not going to argue unless you concede that your prior one was flawed.</p>
<p>Please point to the quote where I specifically said that there is no grade deflation at Princeton. What’s that: can’t do it? Then perhaps you concede that your premise is flawed. </p>
<p>What I said is that, whatever grade deflation may exist at Princeton, the grading is still far less harsh than at many other schools whose students would gladly trade grading structures. </p>
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<p>Again, why doesn’t the same logic apply to schools such as MIT or Caltech? Surely the students at those schools would be able to pull straight A’s at less competitive schools.</p>