<p>Wow this thread kind of irritates me. You are one of the very, very few individuals that I know who has called UNC super, super easy. You’re an outlier, so don’t spread your bias opinion and deceive the majority of students and applicants to UNC. Knowing that the average GPA for the overall student body (all programs in A&S) lingers around a 3.1 GPA. I do not feel that the academic are all that amazing at UNC. As an out of state student, I would of applied to Duke if I had it over again, but I mean UNC does have strong programs because of the students who choose to go here. Though professors do not get high marks in my opinion. They’re more interested in their research and in a large, public school, professors do not look at you as an individual, but as a statistic. They do not care about your growth or success. I will not send my children to large, public schools even though publications rank them amongst some of the top institutions in the nation. For an instate applicant, UNC is a great school, but for an out of state applicant, spend the money and send your children to Duke or a comparable private school, where the education you pay for is totally worth it. If you do not care about academics and do not value that as the main proponent, then UNC is an awesome school because it does have many solid programs and an amazing social atmosphere.</p>
<p>That’s true - but think of the flipside. A student who does really well and gets an A- in a class with a C average. At the moment, that student’s transcript looks a bit bad. Since UNC is known for grade inflation, an employer doesn’t know that that A- shows she did very well indeed in the class. But now, the employer will know.</p>
<p>This policy helps good students, and hurts bad students. As it should be.</p>
<p>Employers do not look at your GPA, unless you put it on your transcript. They just want to see you actually have a degree from UNC. They do not ask for proof until they offer you a position.</p>
<p>“This policy helps good students, and hurts bad students. As it should be.”
I agree with that, I just think the detriments outweigh the benefits. Also, the possibility for such a negative competitive environment that I described above is a bit intimidating, lol.</p>
<p>The new transcript will have very little practical effect on anyone’s post-grad prospects, IMO. 99% of employers just look at the overall GPA, if at all. Almost no employers actually look carefully at anyone’s transcript, and they aren’t going to be scrupulously analyzing the average grade in your ENGL 101 class.</p>
<p>As for grad schools, smaller PhD programs might be interested in this, but that’s about it. Med/Law/MBA programs basically only care about the overall GPA number, because that’s what gets reported to U.S. News. They’ll take the 3.9 over the 3.7, no matter how inflated the 3.9 is, because the 3.9 is going to make the average GPA of their incoming class look better.</p>
<p>This whole initiative is basically the result of a group of self-important professors wanting to think the grades they give out matter a whole lot more than they actually do.</p>
<p>As for the “competitive” environment this will supposedly lead to, I’ll believe it when I see it. I have a hard time believing a little extra info on a transcript that doesn’t really even mean much is going to have a significant effect on the way students interact with each other. Plus, a lot of classes at UNC have forced curves already, and I’ve never noticed those classes having a noticeably more “competitive” or “cut-throat” feel to them.</p>
<p>keepittoyourself, thank you for such a substantive contribution. But, if you go back and re-read my post, I didn’t say GRADES don’t matter–I said the new transcript won’t matter.</p>
<p>About grades themselves, I just said they don’t matter as much as some self-important professors (particularly the particular professor who has been leading the charge on this initiative) would like to believe they do. In fact, the rest of my post quite clearly implied that grades DO matter to an extent–I said that employers sometimes look at overall GPAs and that grad schools are quite interested in overall GPAs.</p>