<p>What is the average freshman GPA at Emory? What is the cut-off to make it to the deans list?</p>
<p>I think it’s about a 3.0-3.1 for freshmen. Don’t know about Dean’s list cutoff. May depend on a percentile. Needless to say that 1st year is the easiest year to get it, because GPAs rise sharply thereafter. Average graduating GPA was 3.38 for 2011 with 45% of them with 3.5+, so a high GPA by say end of sophomore year and after is not special, so it’s much more difficult to attain this percentile after freshmen year.</p>
<p>Dean’s List is top 20%, it varies every semester, but 3.85 is usually a good projection for the cut off number.</p>
<p>Actually kind of scary that perhaps over 20% have that at what is supposedly a challenging school. However, plus/minus system basically makes the 4.0 rare, though many are very close to it.</p>
<p>Why are later classes easier. Shouldnt it be the opposiet?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Exactly, they’re not easier, but average grades in upper level classes tend to be higher because of hefty curving as opposed to the “weed-out” nature of many intro level classes, especially if it’s one of those classes required from some pre-professional track (i.e. organic chemistry for pre-med, financial accounting for pre-business). Also upper level classes are usually filled w/ people who are gonna major in that subject area so they’re probably very good at it already, as opposed to intro level classes that many students take to fulfill GERs.</p>
<p>So in general (and not just at Emory), the GPAs of undergrads tends to increase over the 4 years.</p>
<p>I’m going to be honest, and speak from the perspective of a biology major and I know many of the upper level courses in biology (I’m not counting NBB) are not as rigorous or challenging as bio 141/142. Yet some of these less challenging classes (where most people are already making at least a B- on a regular scale) still curve in excess of a B+. Now, chemistry courses for example are almost all far more difficult than general chemistry. I’m sure that not even the upcurve saves that many people there (also a chem. major). It seems that the 2.85(gen. chem) is about as high as it gets in chemistry. Orgo. sections curve close to a 2.6-2.7 (B-). Bio 141 has probably one of the lowest averages here with about 2.5-2.6. I don’t really know about NBB, but I would imagine that 301 has the lowest average (curved to B- area). I don’t know about humanities and social sciences, but I’d imagine grades are pretty high (as in far higher than many of the easier grading science classes) after intro. classes from my experience. I’ve also heard that political science, for example, requires a 3.7 for honors, which is indicative of high grades. Surprisingly, places like the psyche dept. have some notoriously hard profs and classes like 110 and 103 w/Edwards, that even on an adjusted scale (70 is B- in Edwards), the average is not quite a B- (probably more like a 2.5 or lower). As I always say, it seems as if the psyche department here is more hardcore than normal psyche depts, and grades are more like those of more difficult pre-med courses.</p>
<p>Point is, for various reasons, grades go up over time. Wish I could just say it’s only because we know how to study better even though the material harder like CollegeStu, but I know it’s not that simple. In some cases it is indeed easy grading and an unnecessarily hefty(as opposed to just hefty) curve that explains it away. This pushes Dean’s List cutoff upward a lot, and compresses the grades a bit. So I’d imagine it is even difficult to choose amongst those who are above the cutoff (if there is any such selection process, but wait, I may be talking about Scholars’ Program).</p>