Thanks for that recommendation Tom, because it is anxiety producing to know your child is going to be somewhat handicapped by the grading policy at McGill vis-a-vis an average student going to a Colgate per se. I would describe the oft repeated “non hand holding” descriptor as a very positive spin on the situation, the message sure seems like tough love which is good for your student right? You’re not getting your hand held, there shall be scant career services (we can accept that surely as trade off on the good tuition price in USD) and in fact if you’re an average student we’re hanging a 2.8 on your Transcript, not a 3.5. The attitude and heartfelt defenses of this antiquated policy that most Unis and even feeder schools in their orbit is:
- we will let you deal with those consequnces on your own, so you can grow up, it will be good for you.
- Everyone HR department and Grad School, in the world should hire consultants to suss through what schools are outlier grade deflaters in 2022, so that no one creates buckets of applicants where people below say a 3.0 get shifted, not to the garbage can, but in a top down selection process, into lets just say a “secondary pile”. Apparently according to one poster, this happens when setting up cheap Polish middle office and back office operations, or in Hyderabad India…
To my mind, if you graduate McGill with a 2.8 you may want to keep Poland and Hyderabad in mind for employment or grad school, where there is no hand holding and engineers make $11,000 USD equiv per year.
3. No way McGill should change THEIR policy, to accommodate “US” students. Ok, so wait you now acknowledge this is a TERRIBLE problem that’s built up over the last two decades, but basically its just a US student problem right? but what about Canadian students, should they not have better mobility to move to Chicago, or San Francisco as many prior generations of McGIll grads have? Is this the penalty to hang on their necks to, should they want to explore beyond the borders of La Belle Province?
4. Is anyone aware, if any prestitious private schools in the U.S. or boarding schools etc… that used to give out strict grades, because essentially they could b/c the elite universities always held X number of spots for them for decades, as they would rank each schools students against their own grads, have those days changed much? Have schools thrown in the towel on that and stopped hurting their own, once they realized they were hurting their own, now that their students were competing in the general pool at Harvard , Yale, Chicago, against the public school kids, and lumped together? I.e. once MIT informed them that they didn’t hire a consultant that told them that a 3.3 at ACME Private, is as good as a 3.9 at Susan B. Anthony Public School.?
Good discussion. It seems that some here, are concerned for McGIll that we are having this discussion, and on the eve of decisions. To this bit of anxiety, i hope you realize and maybe you do if this describes your anxiety, that discussing this issue, brings it to light for more people and creates an awareness of the grade deflation, and such awareness acts as a balast in and of itself against the pressures inherintly produced by said out of step deflation - the more press the merrier, should McGill not want to change this, so discuss away I say. Its good for McGIll.
And if they happen to change, all that will happen is that they can charge perhaps as much as $20,000 CAD more per year from US applications for tuition in unregulated programs if they want, and if they care to, they will find that over time their applicant pool from the U.S. at least and probably elsewhere will swell - Its a win win for the students AND the institution potentially.
If the question gets asked enough, by enough concerned constituents of the University, then perhaps some McGill administrators will realize that this questions needs to be asked of themselves, as it has been asked of other institutions elsewhere. Perhaps hire some consultants to help out in the pros cons analysis. IMHO the negatives include, seeming to bend to the desires and aspirations of aspirational folk from the “U.S.” primarily, and that is a negative. But the postivies are myriad if they can put on their big boy pants and realize that change in this case, is a win win
Isn’t there a way to hang internal grades on these kids, if there is some desire to have an old fashioned distribution of grades from the 1950’s? Have an internal distribution of grades, and transcripts for distribtuion are all curved up to not harm the kids? Others have suggested to distribtue a class rank, but that may not help anymore as I think the other great universities have even stopped doing that, as they realize just how hard it is to get admitted to these good schools nowadays, that they don’t want to hang any scarlet letters on their grads - they have decided to let admission and then graduation for their fine institution to speak for itself.
McGill we urge you to please conduct thoughtful self examination on this question. Qui Bono ?
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