<p>How do medical schools view grade deflation? Will grade deflation in my undergrad institution make me less competitive than the other applicants if I have low GPA? I am only undergraduate first-year, but I am worried that I may regret my decision to go to Princeton University. I heard they have a strict policy on the percentage of A's and grade deflation. Will medical schools add more weight to my GPA if I have experienced grade deflation?</p>
<p>haha I believe their "strict" policy is to lower the percentage of students receiving A's from some obscene number to around 35%. Hardly, what I would call grade deflation.</p>
<p>The numbers do not indicate that there is substantial compensation for grade deflation in the medical school process.</p>
<p>35% is NOT grade deflation!!! that's like saying one in three people get A's. ***!!!! my school only gives 20% in some of the "inflated humanities courses" and even less in the premed reqs. like bio and chem</p>
<p>Well, remember that this is a cap, not a floor.</p>
<p>cap or floor, its still high compared to many other schools. These types of private schools are famous for fluffing their students gpa so they can make it to good grad schools or whatever. it's just not fair...</p>
<p>Okay. Just assume my school has grade deflation How does medical schools view it? Will they add more weight to the GPA?</p>
<p>yea dude 35%??? my UM orgo I class was like 12%</p>
<p>I'm going to University of Virginia, and it is known as having grade deflation. How much will it hurt my chance in admission to medical schools if I have low GPA because of grade deflation?</p>
<p>To repeat: There is no evidence that medical schools compensate for grade deflation in the admissions process.</p>
<p>so the moral of the story is to go to a 2nd tier premed school to get a good gpa?</p>
<p>Goodness no.</p>
<p>the moral of the story is to go to a college YOU like and do the best you can</p>
<p>I was jokin...guys...don't get too exited</p>
<p><strong>cap or floor, its still high compared to many other schools. These types of private schools are famous for fluffing their students gpa so they can make it to good grad schools or whatever. it's just not fair...</strong></p>
<p>it's also not fair that other schools have kids who don't work as hard on average and who are less intelligent on average than kids at schools like princeton. there are a lot of people at pton who are extremely intelligent and work pretty hard who just don't do all that well here because not everyone can get top grades. And this grade deflation just screws things up even more and makes pre-med kids more pre-med... ie. they are even more careful in their choice of classes so as to never once truly challenge themselves by taking a class in which there's a possibility they'll get a B. what a waste of time and money. </p>
<p>honestly, saying that top schools have too much grade inflation and at the same time claiming that undergraduate gpas should be comparable across institutions is absurd. grade inflation makes sense in classes where the quality of students is higher since giving out bad grades just to satisfy some quota does not accurately reflect performance. i know that UM is a great school and has a very accomplished student body, but you have to admit that just based on SAT scores and HS gpa, pton students are more accomplished in general. Why shouldn't they have classes that give out more A's to reflect this? If the ivies had the same grading policies as the publics, then pre-meds would never go to them cuz they would ALWAYS do so much better at the publics. At least grade inflation gives them some hope. Trust me, go take some classes at pton... grading is rough, especially in engineering and hard sciences which were rough enough to begin with.</p>
<p>Also, basically every other ivy/mit/stanford/duke gives out between 45% and 55% A's overall. So if you go to pton and you're an A-/B+ student, your gpa had you gone to another of these schools would prolly have been higher. That's a significant comparative disadvantage.</p>
<p>and 35% is only a cap; classes like orgo definitely have lower limits.</p>
<p>First off, Duke tends to give out about 25% A's in organic chemistry, but you're right of course that other classes have much higher grades.</p>
<p>With grade inflation at Ivies, however, what you're left with is the fact that yes, your average Princeton kid is better than your average, say, Nowhere State (NS) kid, but all Princeton kids are not equal, and grade inflation destroys your ability to discriminate between them.</p>
<p>So is the solution to compensate for institutional selectivity? No, for two reasons. The first is that it's simply not fair to the kids who went to state schools for, say, financial reasons, or who took longer than age 18 to really get their act together. It creates a "fast-track" and basically creates a situation where medical students are admitted based on their high school records. The second, however, is that the AAMC has studied the data, and any such modifier would harm the admissions model's ability to predict medical student performance.</p>
<p>In my mind, actually, though, the biggest problem with grade inflation is that it's not equal across departments. If Left-Handed Transsexual Irish Muslim Studies gave out the same percentage of A's and B's as organic chemistry, I'm willing to bet real money that you'd see a lot fewer LHTIMS majors and a lot more future scientists. Whether you should inflate chemistry or deflate LHTIMS is, of course, up to you.</p>