I want to attend Wellesley next fall, but I’m nervous about the combination of academic rigor and grade deflation. I just read this article (http://thewellesleynews.com/2014/11/06/grade-deflation-emphasizes-gpa-over-intellectual-curiosity/), and I was curious to know other students’ opinions. Has anyone had positive experiences with grade deflation? What were the reasons for implementing the policy? Should I be worried about how it will impact my ability to get a job?
Thanks!
It creates a definite disadvantage for grad school applications where GPA is what gets your foot in/out of the door (eg. med-school, law school, top programs in any field). It also doesn’t do the academic environment any favors; in very large departments (eg. economics), it can make the environment intensely competitive to the point where students shy away from helping each other.
In my experience, it didn’t create a disadvantage for grad school applications–Wellesley’s reputation tends to counterbalance the grade deflation, and an explanation of the policy is included when you send your transcript. Also, statistically speaking, Wellesley students are accepted to med school and law school at much higher rates than students at most other colleges in spite of the policy.
They’re certainly accepted into med schools and law schools, but for many not the schools of their first choice. And the letter is fine in some situations, but the reality is that most schools would rather preserve their median/mean GPA statistics.
http://www.wellesley.edu/admission/guidancecounselors/outcomes
This site has some good statistics. 73% of students were accepted to their first choice graduate school, and the six most popular institutions by attendance were Columbia, Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Georgetown, and Stanford.
You may also want to look at this thread: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/wellesley-college/1764344-wellesley-college-grade-deflation.html#latest
For the Class of 2015, approximately 27% of the class graduated with a GPA of 3.60 or higher.
So students do well even with the grade deflation policy in place.
I wish they wouldn’t call it grade deflation–it’s more like grade disinflation. Other schools have an “average” grade of A. Wellesley realized that something needed to change and that grading needed to be more honest. So the grades you get at W aren’t “deflated,” meaning that they are lower than they should be. Instead, they’re just not inflated the way other schools’ grades are. Grad schools recognize this.
Grade deflation definitely doesn’t dissuade students from helping each other - it’s actually the opposite. There’s more of a “we’re all in this together” attitude.
That article is an opinion piece and it leaves out some important information. If the average grade at Harvard is an A- (per the article), at Wellesley (and many other schools, Princeton, BU, etc.) it’s a B+, and this is the grade deflation policy which applies only to 200-level courses and below. Your grad school applications will weigh your major GPA greater than your overall GPA. 300 level courses (usually all of your 300 level courses will be in your major) are not grade deflated, and in fact will prepare you very well for grad school.
For med school, across the country, most people don’t get their first choice med school but Wellesley has a very high placement rate in comparison to most colleges. (I don’t know anything about law school.)
You also have the option of taking one pass/fail class a semester, which does not get computed into your GPA, so if your weakness is math, or whatever, take that one class pass/fail and you will not spoil your overall GPA. My D explained to me that a class could have 10 A’s in it. Maybe one person got a D and that makes the average still a B+. This D could happen at many, many schools, including Harvard etc. She has a 3.9 and came from a mediocre public school. She studies (really studies). She also sleeps 8 hours every night and lives a healthy lifestyle. She says there are brilliant people there who can get A’s without so much studying, or with partying every weekend, or the cramming style of getting work done, like staying up all night writing a paper that’s due in the morning, but there are also people like my D who can get an A average with steady hard work. I can imagine a person without discipline could flounder. But you don’t sound like that kind of person. And this is true for any school.
I am coming back to correct myself. I was wrong that Princeton still has grade deflation. I just found this out through this article: http://www.takepart.com/article/2016/03/31/grade-inflation-wrecking-higher-education?cmpid=tp-ptnr-upworthy&utm_source=upworthy&utm_medium=partner&utm_campaign=tp-traffic Sorry!
Sorry I haven’t had the chance to get on in so long! Thank you all so much for your help. I have decided on Wellesley, and I’m really excited for next year!
Congratulations!
Congrats to the OP!
As a Wellesley alumna and a friend to a current faculty member who worked on creating the grade deflation policy, I am a bit horrified to hear stories through the internet about people not applying because of this policy. The policy was created, in part, to help persuade students to major in the subject they are really interested in rather than in the one that would give them the highest GPA. Before the policy, grading varied greatly between departments, and may have scared students away from more traditionally male-dominated majors.
I also find it hard to believe that med schools wouldn’t be aware of the different grading policies at different schools and take that into account. College admissions officers are certainly aware of this among high schools, and they have a lot more schools to keep track of than med schools. If the med schools are aware but don’t take the varying policies into account, well, then, that’s just idiotic, and I guess there’s not much I can do about it. Knowing Wellesley, though, I’m guessing the College advocates for itself with med schools.
@UNYMom There are no “grade-deflation” excuses. Pre-med students are expected to maintain the same high GPA’s as are coming out of any other college if they want a good (or any) med school placement. I find it disturbing if this wasn’t investigated thoroughly by those making the policy (which seems to be what you’re implying?). Med schools are not going to change their admission standards for particular schools (especially as colleges themselves come in and out of policies–who can keep up?). I find it strange you’d expect that. That said, pre-med is rigorous and it should be.
Oh, I am sure that they considered it when deciding on the policy. It was a long time in the making. And since the policy was put in place, there have been many academic articles on how this policy affects students. If you have access to JSTOR, you can find them easily. Here is in article in the college newspaper that summarizes one of those studies: http://thewellesleynews.com/2014/03/13/wellesley-economics-professors-examine-effects-of-grading-policy/
There hasn’t been much follow up on what the policy means for other sorts of graduate programs, but researchers have looked at medical school admissions. From the article cited above:
"The results show the probability of being admitted to medical school for students majoring in the humanities and non-economics social sciences declined slightly compared to the years before the current grading policy. This dip is partly due to the fact that fewer students from those departments are actually applying. When the researchers controlled for students’ SAT scores, there was no change in the probability that students were admitted.
“What I think this means is that [before the current grading policy] there was somebody who was mistakenly applying because they had very high grades,” Butcher said."
In any case, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, Wellesley grads are still accepted to med school at rates significantly higher than the national rate. Although, as this guy points out, med school acceptance rates may not mean much: http://www.forsterthomas.com/admissionsconsultingblog/undergraduate-medical-school-acceptance-rate-stats-are-meaningless
When I entered Wellesley, in 1971, we were told that the average grade was a C. Grade inflation was rampant elsewhere; at Harvard, for example, IIRC about 80% of the class graduated cum laude.
There were all kinds of restrictions that had been dropped at other schools. If you dropped a course after the first week and there had been no graded assignments yet, which was typical, the course would appear on your transcript as “dropped failing.” Stuff like that.
I don’t know what effect it had on med school admissions, but I think it did hamper people who might have competed for the big scholarships, such as Rhodes, Fulbright, et al.