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<p>Transfer to Harvard or Yale.</p>
<p>ZING.</p>
<p>why would schools like MIT and Princeton hide their GPA stats if they’re inflating their student’s GPA? wouldn’t that attract more applicants, and therefore a larger pool to choose from?</p>
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<p>Suck it up, swallow your pride, and move on. Get a realistic idea of where you are, where you want to be, and how you want to get there, instead of grasping towards a 4.0 you’ll never reach and hurting yourself while you’re at it.</p>
<p>Oh, and DO NOT neglect your social life. Happy people are successful people, and I’ve seen a number of people go down the always-studying-never-socialize-terminally-depressed route. Seriously, when a UChicago student tells you to party more*, listen.</p>
<p>*(or whatever floats your boat)</p>
<p>^That’s good advice.</p>
<p>Unrelated, I have some friends who go to Chicago, and they’ve shown me some posts in your facebook group… LOL (in the best possible way of course - I appreciate Chicago’s sense of humor).</p>
<p>lol, I should totally write an article, “How I went to the University of Chicago and learned to have Fun!” xD</p>
<p>and yeah . . . the facebook group is pretty interesting, haha. If they’re anything in real life like they are online, the Class of 2015 is going to be a riot.</p>
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<p>I didn’t say Princeton was hiding it, but MIT was. And while intuition would tell us that that would bring in more students at MIT, I don’t think that’s the case: MIT’s brand is that it’s extremely rigorous because you’re in a mostly STEM environment. Students, at least undergrads, pride themselves on “drinking from the firehose.” I’m guessing that MIT is grade-inflated similarly to Princeton.</p>
<p>i cant believe this has gone nearly 4 pages with people saying princeton has grade INflation. i think our policy is called grade DEflation, and we actually have an instituted policy, as compared to other schools who might practice a bit of it, but its not a hard and fast rule they have to stick to. each department is limited to giving out 35% A’s. a 3.8 at princeton puts you at the top 5% of the entire school, while 3.8 at harvard is more equivalent to top20-25%. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1185403-getting-plowed-my-freshman-year-princeton.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/princeton-university/1185403-getting-plowed-my-freshman-year-princeton.html</a></p>
<p>tiger2014 posted it in the princeton forum, and its much more helpful with the statistics and the real and actual story behind his post.</p>
<p>Princeton currently has a policy of grade deflation over time, i.e. it’s decreasing from what it was before rather than increasing. However, in the commonly interpreted use of the term (i.e. the difference between what grades should be and what they are), Princeton is still grade-inflated. The average graduating GPA of Princeton seniors was a 3.38, 5 years after the policy was implemented. An average of 3.38 is of course deflated relative to what it was previously (3.46), but on an absolute scale, it’s still inflated. And when you compare it to peer schools, which have average GPAs around 3.4, it’s definitely inflated like them.</p>
<p>Princeton set this policy because it was so inflated before, it felt it had to do something about it so that it’s not as inflated.</p>
<p>Most people in this thread have fallen prey to the idea that Princeton’s grades are deflated on the whole, but in reality that’s not true, just less so than they were before. (Again, this goes back to the two interpretations of the phrase “grade inflation,” one with respect to time and one without, the latter of which is the more common interpretation when people talk about this topic.)</p>
<p>right, but you still say that its on the decreasing trend, while all the other ivies with the grade inflation are on the increasing trend. so even if our GPA is at the same level as those inflated ivies (which i still feel we’re not, because the avg GPA at harvard/yale/penn/brown are much closer to 3.5+), give it another couple of years, and princeton’s avg GPA will be closer to 3.3 and so forth. the point is that professors and administrators are more conscious of what grades they give out. and since i read on our newspaper that we still gave out like 38% A’s last year, professors will always be more strict on their grading policies year after year, on the downward trend. so yes, we are implementing and practicing actual grade deflation, as opposed to the other ivies where the professors are trying to increase the number of higher grades they can give out every year.</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone has recent data to prove that the other Ivies (or most top schools) are still in an increasing trend within the past 5 years (i.e. continued inflation). Of course, viewed over 10+ years, there’s an increase, but even for the little data that is available for the past 5 years, there’s not enough evidence to show that the inflation is continuing at these schools. In fact, the available data shows that it’s mostly stable. Hence why people have largely abandoned the interpretation of the phrase “grade inflation” with respect to time, and now focus on the interpretation indicating the difference between what grades are and what they should be (whatever that means).</p>
<p>Also, I highly doubt that Princeton’s average graduating GPA will continue to decrease by any significant margin. It’s been 7 years since the grade deflation policy was instituted, more than enough time to reach equilibrium. So unless Princeton institutes an even more stringent grade deflation policy, it’s going to stay relatively stable (i.e. around a 3.38 average graduating GPA). What evidence do you have to suggest that “professors will always be more strict on their grading policies year after year, on the downward trend”? In fact, there’s lots of evidence to the contrary, as professors frequently complain about being forced to give only 35% As, etc. That suggests that they intentionally “max out” the high grades allowed by the policy. As far as I see, professors have no incentive to deflate grades any more than they’re required to, since lower grades leads to poorer student reviews, which factor into tenure decisions, etc.</p>
<p>FWIW, my argument is helping Princeton, because prospective students are continually afraid that going to Princeton will harm their chances of getting a strong GPA and getting into grad school/jobs, etc. and I’m quelling that notion. Regardless Princeton students seem to love to wallow in their misery about this policy so they ***** and moan about how bad they have it. Reality is: their grades are as inflated as at HYS and other Ivies (with the exception of Brown, at least).</p>
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<p>Ah, contrare. A reason that I chose to matriculate at Princeton was hearing students complain of grade deflation. After all, I appreciated my high school teachers who graded on a true bell curve. I personally thought that grade deflation would distinguish my hard work. I automatically assumed that my grades would not be impacted.</p>
<p>For some of my freshman lecture courses, the grading guideline was 1 stdev above the mean for a grade in the A range, and 1 stdev below the mean for a grade in the C and lower range. So around the top 16% of the class gets some type of an A, the bottom 16% of the class gets C’s- F’s, and the middle 68% gets some type of a B.</p>
<p>^^I would absolutely shocked if Princeton awarded any F’s (assuming the student actually showed up to class once in awhile). And I would be similarly surprised if Ds were actually awarded.</p>
<p>to the OP. I had a similar experience at Penn. It’s crazy how smart people can actually be. Bell curves are the worst.</p>
<p>OP, you are probably one of those prep/private school kids who have been told that they are geniuses their entire life. Succeeding at a top UG is rather easy if you had gone to a competitive public high school and realize how stupid most private HS kids who go to top UGs are.</p>
<p>Thank you for your assumption. I went to a public magnet school.</p>
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This is because students are careful and will drop the class if they are in danger of a D or F.</p>
<p>as i noted before, there is another thread just like this with more helpful info. this is just some data from a few classes that we took last year.</p>
<p>The “35% A’s” limit is for the entire department, not necessarily individual classes. The 35% includes both A’s and A-'s, so receiving straight A’s like many did in high school would require being in the top 15%-20% of all your classes. This is an unreasonable goal, because making the top 30% is difficult enough for many. I’ll provide some grade-distributions of classes that I’ve taken my freshmen year.</p>
<p>For MAT 202 (Linear Algebra) Spring 2011:
A … 70 >= R > 49.5 … (31 students) 13.8%
A- … 49.5 >= R > 46 … (27) 12%
B+ … 46 >= R > 41.5 … (31) 13.8%
B … 41.5 >= R > 35 … (46) 20.4%
B- … 35 >= R > 31.5 … (28) 12.4%
C+ … 31.5 >= R > 28 … (20) 8.89%
C … 28 >= R > 22 … (24) 10.7%
C- … 22 >= R > 19 … (9) 4%
D … 19 >= R > 15 … (4) 1.78%
F … 15 >= R … (5) 2.22%</p>
<p>As you can see, less than 35% received an A-range grade. This is a huge class too, so there will be nearly 200 disappointed kids not receiving their accustomed A. It’s rather intimidating when you’re sitting in the auditorium waiting for finals to be handed out. You look at the 200+ kids around you and accept the harsh truth that for every 7 of you, only 1 will receive an A. </p>
<p>For NEU 259, a core requirement for the Neuroscience Certificate, the professor emailed us:
"Final grades for the course have also been compiled and are now available. This was a tough course – most of you got B grades (54% of the class, including B+ and B-). In all there are 31% A grades, including two A+s, and no Fs. "</p>
<p>Once again, less than 35% A’s with the majority being B’s. This is a huge class with over 100 students (maybe around 150), but there will always be one or two spectacular students in classes who break test curves and receive well-deserved A+'s.</p>
<p>Lastly, MOL 214 is the biology requirement for medical school. I guess it has a reputation of being cut-throat and competitive because it’s full of pre-meds, but I personally disagree about this stereotype based on my experience. Anyways, the grade distribution was posted as a bar graph but I’ve translated it into forum-friendly numbers:</p>
<p>A/A-: 75 students (27.1%)
B+/B/B-: 142 (51.3%)
C+/C/C-: 49 (17.7%)
D: 9 (3.25%)
F: 2 (0.722%)</p>
<p>Unsurprisingly, less than 35% A’s again with majority being B’s, and this class is full of ambitious, GPA-conscious pre-meds. I can look for more grade-distributions of other courses I’ve taken my freshmen year, but three should be enough. </p>
<p>In summary, the intro courses that incoming freshmen take are probably hit the hardest by grade deflation. However, the examples I provided are all math/science courses which may have preset curves that naturally produce <35% A’s without adjusting for deflation. Getting below an A shouldn’t be a disappointment; in fact, getting a B means you’re part of the majority of the brilliant kids at Princeton. Things will get better because if intro courses are below the departmental 35% cap, then higher level courses will have to make up for it by granting over 35% A’s (which seems reasonable because higher level courses may only ~20 students in the class). </p>
<p>And lastly, FightTheTide11 must have been in a Writing Seminar full of amazing writers or taught by a lenient professor. Six out of 12 students receiving at least an A- is very generous based on my experience and the stories of others. I’m pretty confident that in reality, the majority of grades in Writing Seminar are B’s, especially with the subjective natural of essay grading. So receiving a B in Writing Seminar is perfectly normal as well.</p>
<p>and @phantom, you may be helping prospective princeton applicants, but severely hurting current princeton students. only us students who have actually attended the school and know how its run and how grades are given and how classes are taught go through this grade deflation policy. especially you, coming from stanford, which is known for giving out higher grades (not that im saying they’re undeserved, but just they are more willing to reward better grades). im also not saying that i like grade deflation, because i feel that it causes professors to stray away from giving grades that they feel their students deserve, just because they want to maintain the ruling of the policy. many of my writing seminar papers had a B/B+, or B+/A-, and many students believe that to be the sort of margin of error so at the end of the year, when teachers give out final grades, they can see the distribution of the class and choose accordingly whether that essay was actually a B+ or A-, and so forth.</p>
<p>and so my point was that by knocking down the fact that we do have grade deflation, our GPA’s will lose its strength and value in the bigger picture, because ours are much lower than those of our ivy compatriots</p>
<p>stridegumisbest, you did not give the data that would be necessary to prove a trend. You give two data points (i.e. two classes) and seem to think that’s enough. It isn’t.</p>
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<p>If any Princeton student is “severely hurt” by my statement of objective data about their average graduating GPAs, then they need to grow a pair.</p>
<p>You have only completed freshman year, so I’m not surprised that you overestimate the extent of the grade deflation policy. As you noted, intro classes are probably the worst hit. But the data I have given several times now is for graduating seniors, ones who have gone far past the intro classes. Ultimately, they graduate with inflated GPAs just like the rest of the Ivies. My point is that Princeton students really don’t have as much to complain about as they think they do.</p>
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<p>You make several unfounded assumptions. For one, I was a STEM major at Stanford, where the grades are relatively deflated. For another, Stanford is not “known for giving out higher grades” - there has been no official data released about Stanford’s average GPA since 1992. Either way, average GPAs for a university are largely dependent on the proportion of STEM majors. At Stanford, a large proportion are in STEM fields, where the classes are known to be not just harder, but larger (even in the upper division classes), which tends to mean the average grade handed out is lower. Small classes tend to have more inflated grades, which is true at every school.</p>
<p>Also, even if Stanford were “more willing to give out higher grades,” it would definitely be deserved: Stanford, unlike its peers, runs on the quarter system and pummels its students with 15-week material squashed into 10 weeks. They also have a policy of not giving you a very clear picture of how you stand against others, so it’s very difficult to know just how you’re doing relative to others or where you are in the curve. So students, being neurotic, stay on the ‘safe side’ and work extra hard to make sure they don’t do poorly. In the end, they learn a lot, they worked themselves to the bone, and they get a decent grade - so they have the knowledge/skills and the grades to prove it. This is a reason why Stanford hasn’t seen a need to fight the grade inflation.</p>
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<p>Then what do you have to say about the [url=<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/education/31princeton.html]statistic[/url”>www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/education/31princeton.html]statistic[/url</a>] that the average graduating GPA at Princeton is around 3.38? How is that “much lower” than those of your Ivy competitors?</p>
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<p>=D</p>
<p>/tenchar</p>
<p>^ well, I had meant HYPM, but yes UChicago too. I wonder what other top 10 or top 15 schools run on the quarter system. IMO it definitely makes classes harder and legitimizes some grade inflation.</p>
<p>edit: interestingly, 5 of the top 15 in US News are on the quarter system, and three of them (Stanford, UChicago, and Caltech) were founded at the same time. The other two are Northwestern and Dartmouth.</p>