What are the “subjects that lack traditional rigor”, and what are the other subjects that you say have had less grade inflation?
I agree with all of that - and that advice now can be taken so far (and out of context!) that my D21 was told to go to her state flagship just to get those good grades! Advice can be gamed in any direction and I think we all agree that if college applicants just focus on finding the best learning environment affordable for them, it will serve them well. (Although this takes some of the fun out of CC :)).
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Presumably during the time when a much larger percentage of Princeton students was made up of academically mediocre scions of wealth and power (who collected the “gentleman C” grades), with a smaller percentage of academic standouts (who strived for B and A grades).
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Grades have been going up since the mid-60’s and at the same time the time spent on academics by college students has been decreasing. “Grade inflation” is the name attributed to this phenomenon. (I note in passing that the degree varies across institutions and departments, and that there is some structure evident across time).
“Grade deflation” would mean an overcorrection beyond the mid-60’s level, or a curved class centered at a D. I don’t believe this exists anywhere. I think I prefer @eyemgh 's term of “less inflation” or “easy/tough grading policies” which removed the historical aspect entirely.
Onto specifics:
(1) Curving. I know of no place that requires the number of A’s and F’s be equal. The most common version I have seen is that that the pass/fail threshold is set by the prof, and then among passing students grades are assigned by pre-determined percentiles: x% get A’s, y% get B’s and so on.
I do not like this. I believe it is neither fair nor accurate. But students demand it.
(2) The meaning of grades. Is a C “satisfactory”? Or is it “average”? Or do we call it “average” as a euphemism for “not very good”? There is a perception that if you show up to class most of the time, hand in most of the assignments, and don’t tank the final, that’s an A. In the past, it would be a C.
(3) If an A means “did the work more or less satisfactorily”, why do we need to delineate unsatisfactory work in four different bins? (B-F)
(4) Med schools are not run by idiots who have never heard of grad inflation. They know which schools give out A’s like candy and which ones do not. The strategy of picking a school that grades leniently requires doing it before the med schools catch on. That’s a small window where you can figure it out but the med schools can’t.
(5) I had a friend who taught 1st year physics to pre-meds. He called it “Saving lives, one F at a time.”
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Pre-law students? Transcript Summarization | The Law School Admission Council indicates that law school applicant GPAs are recalculated with A+ = 4.33.
Probably not, since the most recent ones were asking for MATH 240 at Penn.
It’s bad enough that some colleges have this mickey mouse grade. Shame on LSAC for rewarding such idiocy. But that’s lawyers for you.
Ducking and running.
I said “Med schools are not run by idiots”. I said nothing about law schools. 
Which students are you referring to that “demand” a forced curve? Wellesley students fought hard against it and I believe some Harvey Mudd students did, as well? And when I was in college students avoided the classes with a forced curve.
Students can do what they want to do, but in our family, we all chose the best instructors. My son in particular sought out a brutally hard grader (you could get negative points on labs…yes, do all the work and walk out with fewer points than you walked in with) because he had a reputation as a great instructor. He was ultimately on my son’t thesis committee, the best instructor he ever had, and one of the main reason he’s a very strong engineer now. Choosing classes based on grades is potentially harmful to the student in the long run. Sure, get an A, but don’t master the material. It probably depends on the course and major, but what good is that?
For pre-law students (and pre-med students when taking courses outside of pre-med-specified / MCAT-tested subjects), the incentive to chase grades over learning may be significant.
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I wasn’t saying that was the only criteria for selecting a course, lol. I was just surprised about the comment that students would demand a forced curve as if that were a universal thing.
Good for them. Wellesley students are smart.
I suspect the students don’t always know what they are asking for. I further suspect hat they think they are asking for is “not needing to get a 90% to get an A”.
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Indeed. Actually few majors are like engineering where nearly everything is relevant. There are plenty of classes that I had to take where I never referenced the knowledge again.
Hmmm. I hate to be the one to say that there’s material for many classes I took as an engineering undergraduate that I have never had to (thankfully) reference again. Quantum Physics, for example, the last course in the Physics sequence that I had to take and that ended my life long crush on Physics (sorry Physicists).
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Yes, there may be some majors where almost everything is potentially relevant to a future undergraduate course, future graduate study in the subject, or future employment in a major-related job.
However, if one specializes in graduate study in the subject or a major-related job, certain undergraduate courses (relevant to the specialty) could become very highly relevant, while others (away from the specialty) could fade in importance. Of course, if one moves to some other area for graduate study (e.g. professional school like law school) or work, then the amount of which is specifically relevant to the graduate study or work may be significantly less.
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First you have to get accepted. Once that happens, you need to find out if you can afford it without large amounts of debt. You’ll have more than enough debt with medical school, you really don’t want to add an undergraduate debt to that big pile. The best strategy for medical school is to choose an affordable undergraduate. It’s impossible to go wrong that way. The average college student changes their major 3 times, and if you decide against medicine, an expensive school could crush you financially. If you do choose medicine, you enter medical school with low debt.
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Not true. Wellesley and MIT both have some form of grade deflation in certain classes.
Wellesley’s grading policy that legislated the mean grades in certain classes was revoked in 2019. Are you aware of any continuing grade deflation there since then?
Using a curve is not deflation. Grade deflation is when an instructor, with intent, simply chooses not to grant As. Just because grades aren’t inflated like they are at Brown and Stanford, doesn’t mean they are deflated.
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Would you consider Harvey Mudd’s grading practices deflation? Maybe this question is just semantics but I also feel like I am learning a lot about these distinctions through this discussion.