<p>I don’t doubt that some people find it offensive, but what if it’s true? What if there really is a difference in the degree of passion in the student body between HYP and, say, Emory or Michigan? What if the HYP student body really is like whipping cream and most other schools are more like whole milk, with cream dispersed throughout? What if the memories really are different and better for a top student at HYP than they would be at a school that was less inspiring or offered fewer opportunities?</p>
<p>If you think those things aren’t true, then tell us why they aren’t true. If they ARE true, then there’s no point in getting offended when people state the truth.</p>
<p>One point on “grade inflation.” It’s not so much that it’s easy to get As–rather, it’s that it’s easy to get Bs. Or to put it even more clearly, grades of C and lower are given primarly to punish students who are failing to perform adequate work, as opposed to differentiate among students.</p>
<p>Re grade inflation: There is an overall trend, as shown in the data linked by ucbalumnus. However, the data there aren’t given separately for the Ivies, nor is there a comparison based on the academic strength of the incoming class, and quality of work. </p>
<p>After taking a look at John Kennedy’s record at Choate, which recently went up on the internet, I think it’s unsurprising that the averages at Harvard now are higher than they would have been when he was a student. Even twenty years ago, circumstances were different.</p>
<p>I think that the broad use of computers permits students to write much better papers than they could when I was in college. Information is much easier to access. Oblique references can be followed up with little work. Allusions need not escape the reader. Also, a paper that can be edited using Microsoft Word or something similar is likely to turn out much better than a paper that has to be drafted long-hand, then corrected, and finally typed up, with heavy reliance on white-out or corasible bond (and in my case, quite a few sheets ripped out of the typewriter and crumpled up). A lot of the professors are of my vintage, and their expectations for papers were set pre-word processor, initially. It will be interesting to see whether the grades re-normalize after a while.</p>
<p>Excuse me, is it just me or is this an Emperor’s New Clothes moment? I’m looking at ucbalumnus’ link at the school specific data and am interpreting this a lot differently than the experts. First, just about all universities have rising average gpa’s, except apparently community colleges. And second, Harvard’s rise in gpa does not seem to be very extreme in comparison to other schools.</p>
<p>For example, if you look at Harvard v. University of Arkansas:</p>
<p>San Jose State 2000: 2.73
Harvard 2000: 3.41</p>
<p>San Jose State 2008: 2.85 (4 percent rise)
Harvard 2008: 3.45 (1 percent rise)</p>
<p>Am I missing something? Why all the concern over rising gpa at Harvard specifically? Also, I would love to see a correlation with admission rate and average gpa. My guess is that if you compared Harvard to many other schools on this dimension, then Harvard would actually look very stalwart in its grading criteria.</p>
<p>In the end, all the analysis and discussion of whether Harvard or schools like it are worth it or not, makes me think that they probably are worth it, whatever that means. So many trying to prove differently begins to make a compelling case.</p>
<p>I think you’d find more intellectually engaged people at Reed than HYP. Some people find Reedies and Johnnies (St. John’s College) elitist, but knowing them, they have good cause to be.</p>
<p>^ because at a lot of the top schools GPAs have risen to a point where the grades are losing a lot meaning … Cs and Ds are disappearing … with only Bs and As the differences in GPAs has shrunk and lost much signifigance (in a stats sence) … some schools grades are looking more and more like pass/fail even though they give As and Bs. Other schools have risen also but since most of the top schools started with higher GPAs the rise in GPAs has a bigger affect of reducing the value of the grades.</p>
<p>Sorry – I think this is definitely an Emperor’s New Clothes moment and some very fervent number-crunchers intent on making Harvard and other “elite” schools look bad have ended up making themselves look very foolish.</p>
<p>Most universities have rising gpa averages. Are most universities becoming as extraordinarily selective as Harvard? For Harvard, there’s a valid explanation for the relatively minor rise in gpa. </p>
<p>And there is plenty of meaning in Harvard’s average gpa of 3.45. Half the kids are higher, half are lower. There’s plenty of “meaning” in that to help sort them out for their post-graduate pursuits.</p>
<p>^ what you see as am emporer with no cloths I see as an incresing exercise in false precision … the more the grades get crunched into a smaller range the less signifigance small differences mean (that is not a philosophical point but a stats one). BTW - I am not totally diagreeing with you … as long as each school grades however they want and the customers of those grades (grad schools, employeers, scholarships committees, etc) treat the differing grading policies in different ways things will stay a mess. FWIW I’m a grad of 3 top schools and the grading system I liked best was the harshest and one I likes the least was the easiest … there is nothing right or wring about that opinion … but it based on an opinion; that a student chooses to attend a school and if the school is going to have A/B/C grades they should differeniate among the students at the school as opposed to all students anywhere taking the subject … and of course YMMV.</p>
<p>Looks like Harvard Math 55 is a triple honors version of what is nominally sophomore level math (each being a two semester sequence)</p>
<p>21 = regular multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations
23 = honors, including material from 112 and 121
25 = double honors, including material from 112 and 121
55 = triple honors, including material from 112, 113, 121, 122</p>
<p>Note, the following are nominally junior level courses:</p>
<p>112 = real analysis
113 = complex analysis
121 = (junior level) linear algebra
122 = abstract algebra</p>
<p>At most other schools, it is likely that math superstars (who seem to be the intended “market” for Harvard Math 55) will have already taken the equivalent of Harvard Math 21 at a community college or university while in high school and will jump straight into the junior level courses (the ones equivalent to Harvard Math 112, 113, 121, 122, or the honors versions if available at the school they are attending). And then find their way into graduate math courses as juniors or even sophomores.</p>
<p>^^^^^^There are some very lopsided students whose low verbal scores would preclude
admission to Harvard, who might do exactly as ucbalumnus suggests and enroll in junior or senior year classes (or beyond) upon admission to a large state school. This would not surprise me at all, but I expect what they would miss would be the camaraderie of a cohort of entering students in Math 55 as well as the prestige and satisfaction of having completed this type of class. (Difficult to put a value on that…)</p>
<p>I do give Harvard credit for setting up different tracks to reflect varying levels of talent AND preparation even among entering students offering the credentials standard to top level programs. (Advanced classes, 750 plus SAT scores, a slew of science AP’s with 4’s and 5’s, etc.) This is commonly done in language courses (HYP and other elite schools are fairly vigilant when it comes to routing heritage speakers from the Intro Mandarin classes, for instance, giving students just beginning language instruction an opportunity to learn at actual beginning levels), but rarely in heavily curved intro science and math courses, penalizing students with potential who are nonetheless seeing much or most of the course material for the very first time, placed among students who will not (in the interest of protecting GPA for professional school admissions) or cannot (because of institutional policies) advance to a higher level. I would be even more impressed to learn that a number of motivated, “regular” Harvard students are learning enough in two (or even three)years of the regular track to hold their own among veterans of Math 55.</p>
<p>As for grade inflation - it seems that at many schools, including elite schools, students who are doing poorly in a course will withdraw from the course before getting a poor grade (and then have more time to bring up grades in remaining courses), elect to switch to a pass/fail option, or re-take the course in an attempt to earn a higher grade the second time around. In engineering schools in particular, it is not uncommon for students to retake one or more intro courses, especially if the initial bad grade resulted from inadequate preparation, poor study habits, or a poorly managed and badly taught course. </p>
<p>Back in my day, this was far less common, with most students retaining lower grades on their transcripts and just moving on to the next level or deciding against taking further courses in a given area. I have to wonder how much these changing practices are responsible for higher overall GPA’s.</p>
<p>It is rather interesting and disturbing to see students who in high school fretted about whether to take five versus six honors or AP courses junior year suddenly become “academic sandbaggers” by repeating material they already know, or seeking out the easiest courses at university. The differing attitudes of undergraduate admissions committees (who typically do care about whether the applicant took the hardest and most advanced courses available at his/her high school) and medical and law school admissions committees (who apparently care only about GPA, not whether the applicant took a harder or easier schedule) likely has a lot to do with this phenomenon.</p>
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<p>Math 55 appears to be hyper-accelerated, packing six semesters’ worth of material into two semesters. A student taking six semesters of math starting at Math 21, or four semesters of math starting at Math 23 or 25, should have ample time to learn the same material.</p>
<p>An anecdote on the course rigor question: DD tried to enroll in a German for Beginners course at Harvard. Out of 15 students, only 2 were beginners. The other 13 had taken 3-4 years of HS German, or had a German speaking parent, or had resided in Germany for multiple years. The professor, whose specialty was introductory language, was dismayed when the two true beginners fled the class.</p>
<p>fauve, that happened in my intro Japanese course at Harvard as well. It wasn’t 13 out of 15, but I’d say a majority of the students had some kind of background in Japanese or Chinese (which makes learning the Japanese writing system earlier). So I didn’t find that they were weeding people out of the intro classes due to background. If you wanted to take intro Spanish, and you’d had 4 years in high school, it would be pretty easy to throw the placement exam and wind up in the intro class. I don’t think there’s any policy a school could adopt to prevent that.</p>
<p>They did have some courses specifically geared at Asian heritage learners, though – such as Mandarin for Cantonese speakers.</p>
Well I guess if you believe the worst Harvard grads (which you would be by just barely passing vs failing each class) are better than most non-Harvard grads you would in fact believe that. Someone with all C’s at Harvard would be preferred by the employer over the high-gpa state flagship graduate. Which also means by implication ALL Harvard grads have jobs or grad school admission on graduation correct?</p>
<p>ucbalumnus, with regard to your post #153, if I ran medical school admissions, I would definitely take the rigor of the undergraduate curriculum into account, and I take a dim view of academic sandbaggers. The idea that all courses count equally, regardless of level, as long as the few required boxes are checked, just seems wrong.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the policy does seem to be followed fairly uniformly by medical schools, based on the anecdotal evidence I have at hand. So, why? It seems to me that the reliable delivery of “best practices” is one aim of practicing physicians. Also, there are occasionally the patients who present conundrums of diagnosis, and in those cases, a good grasp of the footnotes and brief sections of standard texts is probably an advantage. Perhaps the needed skills can be well honed by aiming for near-perfection, at courses that don’t really pose too much of a challenge? But maybe this is an overly jaundiced view.</p>
<p>In connection with the issue at hand in the thread: I think that a really stellar pre-med could gain a lot by going to Harvard, in terms of having an inside track to admission at the top medical schools, preparation for their courses, and later landing a desirable residency. It’s not required, but I could see that it would be helpful. There is a second group of students below these, who get into good medical schools from Harvard, and are probably neither helped nor hindered with regard to that goal specifically, by attending Harvard; they may have substantial collateral gains. Then there is probably a group who are discouraged from attending medical school by their experience at Harvard. Maybe this is the null set. I don’t really know, but on the obverse side, I think there are some students who make it into medical school from my university, who well might not, if they had been admitted to Harvard (which probably would not have happened, to begin with).</p>
<p>An average, ie 3.45 gpa life sci concentrator with a 35+ MCAT at Harvard is going to be accepted pretty readily at higher ranked med schools than, say, a 3.8 gpa 32+ MCAT from most state flagships. Why? It’s called signaling. The signal flashing at the admissions committees is that the H grads have already undergone the ridiculously difficult scrutiny for admission to H. </p>
<p>Now, can anyone here comment on my posts regarding the really bogus accusations of extreme grade inflation at Harvard? I’m really waiting on that and hoping I don’t have to be really disillusioned about the whole sour grapes garbage I think at this point it’s about.</p>
<p>I find this kind of ridiculous. I’m not a huge Harvard booster. My kid wasn’t that happy there for the first two years and emerged without thinking that positively about his abilities or future . . . but he has done very well. I think a very aware kid at Harvard has a big crash of confidence in the early part. Then there’s a big realization that maybe they are just crass trophy-grubbing scumbags for even getting in, then it settles down and they emerge having gone through something pretty profound . . . and I suspect improved, deepened and greater for the experience.</p>
<p>It is an extraordinary honor at this time to “get in” to a school like Harvard. There are some families who could pay but won’t and some want to tear down the institution and what it means and what it can do for kids. Then there are those whose kids don’t get in, and they have their own reasons.</p>
<p>This thread makes me sad. In some ways, the worst competitiveness and spite comes on parents on behalf of their kids. It just gets really ugly.</p>
<p>And as for the “study” referenced by the OP, I’m looking at it. Have worked for many years in academics in stats and research. There are aspects of the study that don’t make any sense to me and I see where the authors sort of have staked out their claim to proving this particular hypothesis years ago that elite schools don’t really matter for talented kids. I’m going to keep reading thru this study. </p>
<p>In general, I am wary of “advocacy science” and that’s what this feels like.</p>
<p>@sewhappy - Your description of what happened to your son scares me. A lot. Although the fact that he is doing well is kind of reassuring. </p>
<p>As for grade inflation, assuming that HYPSM students are all about equally talented (this might be too much of an assumption), then Stanford probably has the greatest inflation: the average GPA there is 3.55. (Yale comes in at a close second with ~3.51.) This is about an entire 0.3 higher than Princeton and MIT’s averages, and I’m not convinced that Stanford courses are significantly harder than Princeton and MIT’s–at least, not enough to justify such a high curve.</p>