Discussion on the Ramification of Grade Deflation at McGIll

Colleges and Universities A-Z McGill University
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I love McGIll, i think their grade deflation policy needs to change. The peer institutions have changed over the past 3 decades, and McGill is disadvantaging their own graduates, particularly those in the bottom 3 quarters of the class, in a way that most U.S. institutions that are in the same league as McGIll no longer do; at least inasmuch as it relates to those segments of their own graduates.

Interested to hear thoughts on this out of step policy at McGIll. Is McGill paying attention to this issue, and what are their thoughts on it? What are their old defensese of it? Are the open minded to considering the impact on their graduates, particularly those looking to go to grad school or professional school, but also those entering the workforce where GPA’s are published on resumes?
Staying out of step, while it feels brave, what are the consequences other than feeling like you’ve taught that student in the 65th percentile in your class, that they’re now in University and not going to get all A’s like in High School?

If that’s the valualbe lesson sought, is there a way to deliver that to students while at school, but to correct corse on the final transcript, so that every graduate doesn’t have to enter the job market or apply to law school with an explanatory brochure explaining how a 2.79 gpa at McGill is “actually quite decent” and compares to a 3.5 + GPA at Pomona, Haverford, Hamilton College or Boston College?

Do McGIll’s averge students need to be flogged unlike Boston College’s just b/c grade inflation everywhere else is ridiculous and out of conrol?

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I would be curious to compare McGill typical grades to other institutions. Is there a web site where a student can browse McGill grade distributions by class and instructor?

As an example, for UC Berkeley you can browse this info on Berkeleytime: Berkeleytime

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I think it’s worth considering that the peer institutions you mention seem to be conflated with US institutions. I don’t think McGill sees itself that way, and reasonably so. With only 11% US students, McGill has plenty of Canadian, Commonwealth, and other international institutions to serve as more relevant peers.

This issue is worth consideration by US students anticipating graduate work in the US, but I don’t think that translates to it being an institutional priority for McGill.

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I totally agree this, if you’re coming from the U.S., considering accepting a McGill offer, is a HYPER sensitive issue. but McGill has historically at least had a lot of students come to it from the U.S., moreso than any other Canadian university, so that alone, unless they’re blind to it, or no longer want U.S. students anymore, should in and of itself, change the analysis for how McGill see’s itself. Unless it wants to change and close that traditiional U.S. door, and become exactly like other Canadian universities in its profile I think the diversity is super cool at McGIll, with the US contingent, but the changing admin at McGill may be tiring of that, or not so sold on it. And perhaps McGill is more focused on its overseas students from the middle east, and far east now, as opposed to historical patterns, to bother to get “in line” with the world the U.S. graduates face upon graduation. That’s a good point, but flipside is this, at least here - College Confidential boards are not 11% US parents, probably more like the flipside of that, like 89%? Am i right about that roughly if anyone knows?

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Among American universities here on College Confidential and on Reddit, Boston University is frequently called out for grade deflation. Among current BU students the complaints are along the lines of “I really, really worked hard in that course, but I ended up with a C” Among prospective students worried about grade deflation the comments revolve around “I don’t want to spend over $60,000/year tuition only to get a low GPA”.

Grades are awarded on performance, not effort.

Schools like BU that have 80,000 applicants for 3600 freshman spots do not have to promise or imply that you will do well if you attend.

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The idea that the minority proportion of US students at McGill should alter how McGill sees itself in the world seems based on an American exceptionalism that I simply don’t share. The logic doesn’t work for me.

And there are more French students at McGill than there are American. Why suggest that McGill’s lack of catering to US standards wrt grade distribution is due to its focus on students from the “middle east and far east”? Again, the logic escapes me. The bias doesn’t…

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You don’t like their grading policy- don’t go there. It’s not as if there aren’t OTHER universities in the world!

So confused. Why is this even an issue???

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However, by available entering standardized scoring profiles, these examples do not appear to represent especially close academic peers in relation to McGill:

ACT Middle Ranges

Pomona: 33–35
Haverford: 33–35
Hamilton: 33–35
Boston College: 33–34
McGill: 29–32

SAT Middle Ranges (EBRW + Math)

Pomona: 1470–1570
Haverford: 1420–1540
Hamilton: 1410–1540
Boston College: 1420–1530
McGill: 1290–1460

To the extent that these profiles suggest level of academic preparation, students qualified for these other colleges would not be especially likely to encounter insurmountable grade deflation if they were to attend McGill.

(Source for scores: Princeton Review)

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This. Note, too, that regardless of the rubric used by the institution, some students are still earning those top grades. Some rubrics just make the earning distinction clearer.

This same complaint comes up on the prep school forum every year. The New England boarding schools are notorious for grade deflation—straight scale, no do-overs, you get what you get and you don’t have a fit. Is there a problem come college application time? No. The colleges understand the grading policies of each high school and each student is evaluated only within the context of their school and where they fall among their peers who are under the same grading constraint—and some of those peers still manage to earn those top grades. Is it harder to earn top grades in those pools? Absolutely. If top grades are your primary concern, consider the pool you’re trying to enter.

Nothing more to say, IMO.

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i’ve received PMs about this sort of being a bit of a secret… and you’re hitting on it here. You are 100% correct i was exaggerating McGill’s “comparables”. I know full well, that McGill is more like a Syracuse than a Hamilton College or a Haverford or Boston College… I was told in a PM that McGill is this secret for us folks, and we just have to put up with this sadomasochistic policy b/c we can’t have everything, it would just be too good, if McGill were to get “in step” they would attract more applicants, and could raise the tuition, thus closing this loophole. We fully realize its not a loophole or secret in the eyes of any Guidance or College counseler from any higher achieving high school in the Northeast, private or public. Thats a smallish group of people. If you asked one of the millions of parents from Ontario or B.C. that are sending their kids to McGIll, talk is of “Canada’s Ivy League” and a global ranking of whatever it is 34… Its not… Canada’s Villanova, or Syracuse or TCU…

Great discussion… torn as to whether to keep this private, because i didnt’ want to have this part of the discussion publicly… i’d rather focus on whats good for all the kids at McGill… and its not just U.S. students heading back largely into a Continental North American workforce that are harmed, or Grad schools, its also a lot of Canadian kids too… so didn’t meant to ruffle that most Canadian feather…

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If you choose to attend a Canadian University, you are choosing to accept their grading system and everything that goes along with the Canadian way of executing higher education. Why should American students get some special designation to explain their grades? Let graduates figure out how to do that, if they feel compelled to.

Well connected employers will know of McGill. But remember that most Americans have only heard of the very famous universities/colleges that everyone knows, or the universities/colleges in their area. So McGill isn’t a household name and that’s a choice anyone makes whether they choose McGill, or Rice, or Bates, for that matter.

McGill is an excellent university. It’s in Canada. The whole premise of this post fails to acknowledge that. Your 2.97 GPA is probably great in Canada. McGill makes no promise that after you graduate, American employers are going to understand your GPA.

McGill is very popular with students in my part of the Northeast. I have seen a couple of grads struggle a bit to find jobs. Probably more down to the individual student and not McGill, but it’s worth noting that there may not be the extensive alumni connections, and thus jobs and internship opportunities that are assumed at many US colleges. Again, students are making a choice.

You made a choice that worked out well for you. It’s up to you to make it keep working.

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“The New England boarding schools are notorious for grade deflation—straight scale, no do-overs, you get what you get and you don’t have a fit. Is there a problem come college application time? No. The colleges understand the grading policies of each high school and each student is evaluated only within the context of their high school and where they fall among their peers who are under the same grading constraint—and some of those peers still manage to earn those top grades.”

This is exacltly correct what you’re saying here. Many schools in the U.S. , and one lone school in Canada, (Univeristy of Waterloo) do benchmark and consider what high schools the grades are coming from. McGIll doesn’t benchmark, maybe someone can correct me, as I understand they go over the printer and off averages off a list, and refreshingly establish a cut off. Well guess what, a lot of grad schools BASICALLY DO JUST THAT.

Let that Irony sink in, as you think this topic is beyond reproach and that just let it be, or go away and if you 'want top grades" then consider going “elsewhere”…

As an aside, worse than that, (or better than that if you’re not a great student) in the case of McGIll, they flat out admit that they make no distinction or adjustment for AP class or Honors classes… vs “on level”…
Guess what a lot of the grad schools in the world, law schools, business schools, med schools, their first round of screening for a great deal of them is that they behave a lot like McGill does themselevs ---- fortunately or unfortunately. They start weeding out bigtime based on GPA, and LSATS and MCATS etc… Some no many do attempt to make some adjustment for schools, but a very large number are not going to realize a 3.0 at McGill, is literally like a 3.7 at Villanova,
they are literally throwing every application below 3.2 in the dumpster, even if you have a perfect LSAST score… period. Its only borderline admissions cases where some but not all schools start to consider, if they have data available or historical experience, McGIll’s grade deflation if they know about it.

I appreciate your response however, am I wrong to be concerned for McGIll students, and what McGIll could do to give their OWN graduates a better shake in the world? These are their own people, their own graduates they are intentionally harming at this point. There is no two ways about it. Qui Bono? Is that a “go away” and find another school discussion point to raise? Is that being faithful to those who care about McGIll?. The hopeful platitude that somehow the rest of the world adjusts to McGill’s grades is something that I thought McGIll should be big enough to be subjected to some introspection on. I like the bravado of wishing the kids could just suffer through this like their grandmother or father did or whatever, but its getting old

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Sorry, but your posts are illogical in the extreme.

There are plenty of colleges with grade deflation- Cal Tech and MIT for example. If you take a look at the admissions results of MIT grads to med schools and law schools, it’s clear that grad programs take into account the grade deflation, since there are kids getting into programs that theoretically, they shouldn’t be accepted to if grad programs were throwing applications into the dumpster as you describe. (No grad school operates that way, just to correct your misconception).

And your comment about perfect LSAT scores- there are law school in the T-14 which are KNOWN to welcome “splitters”- high scores and lower GPA’s, or vice versa. And there are the law schools which are so holistic that another element in your application (having a parent who is incarcerated, for example, so you have a personal POV on the legal system) can trump LSAT AND GPA.

Do your homework!

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[quote=“Deptford44, post:12, topic:3626100”]
“These are their own people, their own graduates they are intentionally harming at this point. There is no two ways about it.”[/quote]

Yet here we are, having a discussion with at least two ways about it. I’m afraid this, and other assertions, just don’t add up to a winning argument about the actual consequences of McGill’s practices.

It’s great to have this conversation so that parents, and whatever few students read this forum, can be educated about McGill’s practices if they weren’t already aware. But the relative grade deflation isn’t news to either myself or my daughter. Nor is is the relative ease of entry into some McGill faculties. Nor the lack of career service offerings so common in US schools.

Remarkably, we haven’t found any of this information being held in some secretive way. And perhaps at least equally remarkable, my student remains keenly interested in what McGill DOES have to offer, given her understanding of the downstream impact of these supposed deficiencies.

What’s unremarkable to me is that she has the maturity to evaluate the relative qualities of all the schools she’s applying to, without frustration.

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I think this thread raises an interesting point. With our world becoming increasingly international, it might be worthwhile for universities world-wide to include something on the transcript of every student to help prospective employers and graduate schools put the student’s grades in context.

I think the simplest solution would be to list class rank percentile. For example, Student X graduated in the 60th percentile overall, 75th percentile in her major. Voila! Would work the world over.

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I have been in corporate recruiting for over 35 years and have never seen a situation where a company did not have the ability to understand a foreign transcript or interpret a GPA.

How dumb do you think employers are?

Years ago a company I worked for was evaluating moving a shared services operation to a country in Eastern Europe where we hadn’t had much of a presence at all before. It would have included dozens of lawyers, experts in procurement, financial analysts, a treasury team to work on foreign exchange issue-- mid to senior level professionals, plus the entry level hires in those disciplines.

We retained a consulting firm to do detailed breakouts of all the universities in the region, plus create a talent map of what the prestigious awards were, what a competitive CV would look like to gain admittance to a top law school, what the grading breakdowns were by major, what the top government and commercial employers in the region looked for, what the certifications were like for CPA’s or comparable, how many hours of supervised work as an attorney were required before being allowed to practice independently, etc.

You really think companies routinely toss CV’s without understanding the local educational system? There are countries where the grading is on a 1-10 scale, countries where it’s 1-5, countries where “college” isn’t really a college, it’s a secretarial training program, countries where there is mandatory military service so everyone is “older” than their US counterparts, and countries where only the tippy top students attend university because the gate-keeping starts at 7th grade and the flunk out rate at university is very high, so ANY university grad is likely to be highly qualified.

Much ado about nothing. McGill is a well known, highly respected university!

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McGill is a public university in Quebec. As such, the McGill “admin” doesn’t really call the shots, the Quebec government does. The Quebec government has almost no interest in educating students who will go to grad school in the U.S. or anywhere outside Quebec. A few is OK, to keep up McGill’s international prestige, but overall, they want to educate Quebecois or French students who will stay in Quebec and contribute to the Quebecois economy and society. I’d encourage anyone who is interested in McGill or any other Canadian university, but especially McGill, to do their research on contemporary Canadian history and society.

My kids are dual Canadian and US citizens. Just as Canadian employers will not have heard of Syracuse or Villanova, US employers are less likely to have heard of Canadian universities. I have a '23 grad who is applying to both Canadian and US universities/colleges. One of the final selection factors will be which country he wants to live in. If he wants to live in Canada, he should attend a Canadian university and vice versa. One shouldn’t expect to get an education in country A and be able to get a job in country B just as easily as those educated in country B. Life doesn’t work that way.

Someone brought up law school admissions. Every T14 class has McGill and U of T students. Maybe an individual student might fare better or worse in the GPA department at McGill vs random US university, but there are so many factors that go into how well a student does, that it’s unfair to blame the university’s grading policies as the sole cause.

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And there are the law schools which are so holistic that another element in your application (having a parent who is incarcerated, for example, so you have a personal POV on the legal system) can trump LSAT AND GPA.

Blockquote

No thanks, there has to be an easier way for McGill parents, than to go to jail :slight_smile:

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My point was that NO law school dumps applications in the trash because the GPA doesn’t meet whatever arbitrary bar you think exists.

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i realize blossom, i’m joking with you. you make a fair point.

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