<p>Which schools are known for grade deflation?
In another thread, Cornell and UChicago were mentioned. what about some other schools?</p>
<p>Boston U is known for grade deflation.</p>
<p>Deflation: Chicago, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Caltech, Berkeley</p>
<p>Princeton, Harvey Mudd</p>
<p>McGill, Colgate</p>
<p>Deflation: Chicago, Cornell.</p>
<p>False. Both schools have among the highest rates of growth in grade inflation over the past 15 and 35 years. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com%5B/url%5D">www.gradeinflation.com</a></p>
<p><a href="http://gradeinflation.com/chicago.html%5B/url%5D">http://gradeinflation.com/chicago.html</a></p>
<p>(But, it's true, they may be "known" for it, even if it isn't supported by the evidence.)</p>
<p>Deflation-Reed, Swarthmore, Wake Forest, U Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Harvey Mudd, Cornell, BU (new grading policy), many top public schools (Berkeley, Anne Arbor, UNC). Reed, Cornell, Harvey Mudd, and Swarthmore sound particularly rough to me and the others not so terribly bad. Inflation- Harvard and Stanford. Princeton has instituted a new quota on high grades, so things are likely to be rougher there than at the other Ivies.</p>
<p>From personal expierence, Vanderbilt is closer towards deflation</p>
<p>I have heard Chicago, Cornell, and Swarthmore also deflate grades.</p>
<p>You heard wrong. Look at the data.</p>
<p>As a current Cornellian, I would say that there is little to no grade deflation.</p>
<p>I'd say the worst it gets at Cornell would be a class median of B/B- in most intro and mid-level courses ENGINEERING courses. A couple of high level engineering courses also have medians of B/B-... but high level courses is when the median starts to rise to B/B+</p>
<p>If you looked at grade medians for classes falling under categories such as Applied Economics Management or Hotel Administration, you'd have classes flying left and right with medians upwards of B+ to A-</p>
<p>So... Cornell in general is not grade deflated, only some parts of it is. Mini is correct.</p>
<p>EDIT: And since when is a median of B/B- grade deflation?! Any higher than that and it's starting to become inflated! I'd say medians at B-/C+ and lower constitute grade deflation.</p>
<p>Every time I say this, I get shot down, but yes. Chicago, over time, has inflation, rather than deflation, but less relative to other schools.</p>
<p>That said, a 3.26 average GPA is really, really high. Considering that a B+ is a 3.3, a lot of students are getting quite good grades at Chicago.</p>
<p>I've also never understood the fuss about grade deflation. If Chicago is known to have grade deflation (even though it doesn't), wouldn't you rather go to school at Chicago, where you could get an A and it would mean more to you and your future employers than a school that is rumored to have inflation, where you don't know if you earned the A by merit or by design?</p>
<p>Unfortunately no one gives credit for deflation. I'd much rather have an A at a similarly selective, highly ranked school, than an A- at a deflatory school.</p>
<p>An avg of 3.26 isn't that high. Most Ivies are above a 3.3.</p>
<p>hahaha. I was also the kid who, in high school, hated getting easy A's. I always felt like I didn't deserve them. I find Chicago's grading extremely comfortable for me. My grades aren't high enough for me to have a false sense of confidence in my abilities, but aren't low enough to discourage me from continuing to try. I don't know my GPA, but it's probably a little bit less than a 3.26.</p>
<p>I also have to point out that grade inflation has nothing to do with difficulty of program, and that it's not always easy to get A's at Harvard, either. One of my friends, a Harvard linguistics concentrator who is now pursuing a PhD at Chicago, said that the first time she got straight A's was her first quarter of school-- at Chicago.</p>
<p>I've always said that the difference in grading between different majors is much greater than between different schools.</p>
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I also have to point out that grade inflation has nothing to do with difficulty of program, and that it's not always easy to get A's at Harvard, either. One of my friends, a Harvard linguistics concentrator who is now pursuing a PhD at Chicago, said that the first time she got straight A's was her first quarter of school-- at Chicago.
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<p>Yeah, but you're presuming the grade inflation is solely about the ease of getting A's. That's just one part of grade inflation, and, frankly, only a minor part. The more important part of grade inflation is how easy it is to * avoid flunking out*. At grade inflated schools like Harvard, it's practically impossible to actually flunk out. As long as you actually do the work, you know you're going to pass. Maybe you won't get A's, but you know you're going to pass and you know you're going to graduate. That's a big reason why Harvard's graduation rate is so high - as practically nobody actually flunks out. </p>
<p>Contrast that with other schools in which you can do all the work, * yet flunk out anyway*. Certain schools whose names end with the words "Institute of Technology" immediately come to mind.</p>
<p>I consider the ease of flunking out a far more important component of grade inflation than is the ease of getting A's, for one simple reason: the gap between having top grades and having just mediocre (but still passing) grades is far smaller than the difference between passing and flunking out. Even if you get mediocre grades, you still have a degree. You won't get into a top grad school, you'll probably have difficulty in getting certain top jobs, but at least you'll have a degree. That's a whole lot better than flunking out. By flunking out, not only will you not get a degree at your school, but you probably won't get a degree at any other reputable school as no decent school wants to admit a transfer candidate who flunked out of his previous school.</p>
<p>Sakky, how can you determine that by average GPA? I'm no statistician, but I imagine that standard deviation plays a lot into determining the variance and preponderance of failing grades. I wouldn't be surprised if Chicago's standard deviation was small-- from the article I posted earlier and other anecdotal indications, students don't often fall below a B or B- and don't often go above an A-.</p>
<p>In my first year, I encountered different grading scales. In one class, I never landed anything higher than a B- (class average), and in other classes, I found it pretty easy to get a B+ or even an A. I attribute this partly to my own academic strengths and weaknesses but also to each individual professor. I probably could have pushed myself to do even more work in my B and B- classes, but I didn't want to make life unpleasant for myself. I was doing the best I could at the time I was doing it.</p>
<p>That leads me to another question: is college supposed to be a rubber stamp, or is it supposed to be an uphill climb? I actually do know of somebody flunking out at Harvard, and as far as I'm aware, he failed a class simply because he didn't think it worth his while to attend class. At all. Ever. The other person I know is "floating" by with B's-- by his own admission, his attendance and his work is highly inconsistent. Yet another person I know is taking the easiest classes available and congratulating himself on the work he gets done for them. These are pretty upsetting situations for college students to be in, and I have to admit that even though their academic attitudes are their own fault, I think Harvard is serving as an enabler, doing nothing to try and dissuade these attitudes.</p>
<p>At Chicago, I only know of one person "flunking out" (i.e. put on academic probation-- once or twice, though as far as I know she's still at the school) and of a few more students who take time off to sort out personal, financial, and family issues, and in some cases, to gain maturity. They're not flunking out, so to speak, but they are aware that Chicago presents an academic challenge that needs to be tended to almost exclusively. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing.</p>
<p>neither chicago nor cornell hand out lower grades than other top schools, it's just urban legend. the average gpas at these schools both linger around a 3.3, dead even with other top schools. in fact, the 'business' school at cornell i believe has an average upwards of 3.6, someone posted a link not too long ago with average grades from different classes in there, and they were LITERALLY ALL As</p>
<p>here's the thread i was referencing, look at the later pages: <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=354037&highlight=grade+deflation%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showthread.php?t=354037&highlight=grade+deflation</a></p>
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Sakky, how can you determine that by average GPA?
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<p>You can't. I never said you could. You can infer it by graduation rate and a host of other factors. </p>
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That leads me to another question: is college supposed to be a rubber stamp, or is it supposed to be an uphill climb? I actually do know of somebody flunking out at Harvard, and as far as I'm aware, he failed a class simply because he didn't think it worth his while to attend class. At all. Ever. The other person I know is "floating" by with B's-- by his own admission, his attendance and his work is highly inconsistent. Yet another person I know is taking the easiest classes available and congratulating himself on the work he gets done for them. These are pretty upsetting situations for college students to be in, and I have to admit that even though their academic attitudes are their own fault, I think Harvard is serving as an enabler, doing nothing to try and dissuade these attitudes.
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<p>First off, I would have to question whether the person you know really flunked out of Harvard, or just dropped out of his own volition. Like I said, it is practically impossible to actually flunk out of Harvard. If your story is correct and he just never felt the urge to ever attend a particular class, that just begs the question: why did he sign up for it? And even if he did, why didn't he drop the class, or in extremis, why didn't he just withdraw from Harvard completely? It seems illogical to the extreme to take a class that you just don't care about, when you have the free choice not to. </p>
<p>But even if you are correct, that just gets to another point I've been making throughout CC. You ask whether a school should be a rubber stamp or an uphill climb. My first response to that is that if a school doesn't think that a particular person is going to meet the academic standards of that school, then the answer is simply to not admit that person. Why admit somebody who isn't going to graduate anyway? You're just wasting everybody's time. {To those who would say that you can't tell who won't graduate, I would say that while you obviously you can't tell perfectly, you can find strong statistical correlations, just like insurance companies have found that smoking is statistically linked to poorer health. For example, if one particular high school happens to produce an unusually high percentage of students who flunk out of your college, then the answer is to admit fewer students from that high school in the future.}</p>
<p>My second response is that, whether we like it or not, society, has deemed the college degree to be necessary. Like it or not, you need a college degree to be eligible for almost all decent jobs out there. It doesn't really matter that much what your grades were, it doesn't even matter all that much where you got your degree, or what you majored in. All that matters is that you have a degree. Most companies won't even interview you if you don't have a degree. Sad but true. That's the reality of the world we live in today. </p>
<p>Hence, to deny somebody a degree is to basically inflict cruel and unusual punishment on that person's career, particularly so when you know that person could have gotten a degree if he had just gone to an easier, lower-ranked school. There are around 2500 colleges in the country, many of which will grant degrees for very little work. The guy who graduated with a 2.0 GPA from SE Missouri State is far better off than the guy who flunked out with a 1.95 GPA from Chicago (or Caltech or MIT or anywhere else), because the former guy at least has a degree. Most companies won't even interview the 2nd guy. </p>
<p>Look, I can perhaps understand making a school an uphill climb in the sense of making it hard to get A's (although even here, I would say that that puts your students at a serious disadvantage when it comes to getting admitted to graduate school or winning major scholarships like the Rhodes). But not to the point of actually flunking many of them out. Like I said, a better way would be to simply not admit those students in the first place.</p>
<p>I think what I meant to say is that the student at Harvard who "flunked out" didn't really flunk out. It was his decision not to go to class, he was aware he was not going to class, and, from what I know of him, I think his decision not to go to class was based both on overall chutzpah (college students are inclined to think they can get away with anything), and that he had better things to do than go to class.</p>
<p>Harvard, in turn, asked him to take a semester off, at which he got himself a great work experience. I believe he is returning this fall to finish his degree.</p>
<p>He is sort of a Bill Gates case, if you will.</p>
<p>I agree, sakky, that college degrees are important. However, if all I was looking for was a degree from a college, believe me, I would have settled for the handful of four-year colleges in my backyard instead of signing myself up for Chicago. I would have saved a lot of time, a lot of money, and a lot of hassles, especially because I'm not going to enter any job field in which I NEED a high-class diploma. However, the diploma is not really what's important to me-- I'm looking for an academic experience that's really going to expand who I am. I want that uphill battle.</p>
<p>As I mentioned, I don't know anybody who literally has "flunked" out of Chicago, though I do know people who have taken time off. Say the MIT flunkout needs a diploma for a career-- he or she will have many options to get one. I don't know enough about campus culture at MIT, but at least at Chicago, if you're not doing well, you're probably not enjoying yourself that much either, and you probably want to transfer to another school even before the school asks you to transfer by flunking you out.</p>