Out of curiosity, what is the GPA trend like in college from freshman year all the way to senior year?
I know this is a hard question and depends on each student, major, college, etc. but I can’t seem to find any stats online.
Do people tend to have better semester GPA senior year in comparison to freshman/sophomore/junior year because of less required hard class they must take before graduation, or have lower semester GPA if they are, for example, PhD bound and don’t need to care for senior GPA as much?
Since your in the engineering thread. At the Michigan engineering open house the head said that they expect most kids to drop a full grade but their avg from freshman to senior year is 3.3. They want their students between 3.0 - 3.3. Of course higher also… Lol…
This also depends on your course load. Taking 4 years or 5 to finish. Etc etc. If we’re taking just engineering, it’s tough stuff. Strive for higher grades but realistically they might be lower then your currently used to.
My memories (from 1980s, one example) - A lot of my friends had low freshman GPA, with steady increase over the next year. In high school I had helpful AP prep and ability to skip Physics 1 and 2 (very tough classes at my school) and repeat Calc 1 … so my GPA started very high. Then it decreased over time.
Interesting. Early 80’s I started 2.4, 3.0 then Dean’s List last 3 semester (CMU MechE) and recall others also did better in later major-specific coursework.
My D at Purdue started in the low to mid 3s and has been right around 3 Sophomore and Jr years. Hopefully this doesn’t mean it gets harder. 3.0 is a cutoff for several recruiters.
@RichInPitt, it’s interesting that some postings specify a minimum GPA when there’s so much variability in grading between institutions. Brown and Stanford are well known for massive grade inflation with median graduation GPAs over 3.5. Harvey Mudd and Cal Poly graduate 4.0 in any engineering discipline roughly once a decade.
I hired many college graduates and always reviewed their transcripts. So, from my memory of over a hundred engineering transcripts; GPA’s were pretty constant over the 4 years for most, some rose varying amounts, a very few went down.
The full grade drop that I have heard about is from high school to college.
Certainly not a scientific study and may not be representative of all colleges.
My GPA was one that rose over the 4 years. I improved my study skills, got into study groups and was more interested in the upper level classes were the reason for the change. My son’s GPA also rose some while my daughters was pretty constant. A family of engineers.
My Engineer D went to Purdue. Her first semester was her worst. It improved and rather plateaued. She learned how to change her study habits. They had a picture of a large bus in their dorm and papers with their names they could put on the bus. It was called the “Struggle Bus”
The first semester in Engineering can be a shocker. At Clarkson (1980s) the minimum GPA to keep scholarships was lower the first semester (or maybe the entire Freshman year?). That was a blessing to some of my classmates, especially those from smaller rural high schools that did not offer AP classes. Most (not all) were able to improve their GPA and keep their scholarships.
At my S19’s tech-based school they have a midterm test in both calc I and calc II and give you only so many times to pass, then they boot you out of the class. While his school might not be super selective to get in, getting out successfully is another story. I would gather that once they weed out the students that can’t do the work , the GPAs level off.
Frosh typically have lower college GPAs than their high school GPAs, because the A/B students in high school get spread across the A/B/C range in college (and a few get D/F grades). At super-selective colleges, A students in high school get spread across the A/B range (with a few C/D/F grades). The adjustment from high school to college also affects some students.
However, college GPAs tend to rise as students move up class levels because (a) the students who have the most academic difficulty drop out or get dismissed, and (b) as students move up in class levels, they take mostly courses in their majors, which are their presumed main interest, compared to less desired general education and preliminary requirements.
As you said, there is a large amount of variation. As such, it helps to list a specific college, and even better major within that college. Without this information, it is difficult to give a generalized answer.
For example, ~40% of students in the US who start at a 4-year college do not graduate within 6 years. Those who do not graduate are more likely to have poor grades than the overall student body. If you remove the poor performing students from the average, then the average grade of the class goes up. from freshman to senior year. However, the portion of students who do not graduate varies wildly between colleges. At many of the highly selective colleges that are emphasized on this site >95% graduate. While at some less selective colleges <20% graduate. The reasons for the GPA increase will vary depending at >95% graduation rate college and a <20% graduation rate college.
This post was on the engineering forum, so I’m guessing you are referring to engineering. Engineering has a similar drop out effect, which again differs by college. For example, the Duke study at http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/grades_4.0.pdf found that roughly 1/3 of Duke students who said they intended to major in STEM majored in humanities/social science instead, and those 1/3 tended to be weaker students (being female was also a strong predictor that remained after controlling for student quality). Removing the 1/3 who are often weaker students was one of the key contributing factors to the average GPA increase, so STEM saw a larger GPA increase than non-STEM. The average GPA increase from freshman to senior year was ~0.4 for STEM and ~0.1 for non-STEM.
I could also list several colleges that have different trends for different reasons. It’s difficult to generalize.
