<p>I know that Wellesley is an amazing school, especially academically...and many people say its students are very competitive. Is there grade deflation?--if you put in the effort, talk to your professors, re-write papers, etc., will your grade reflect the work you put in? </p>
<p>Also, is it commonplace for students to be able to socialize (moderately) on weekends and still maintain excellent grades?</p>
<p>I love everything I have read about Wellesley and I am going to visit in a few weeks, but I am concerned because I am a social person, I like boys, and academics are extremely important to me. I'm worried that I may find it difficult to balance everything at a school like Wellesley.</p>
<p>If anyone has any insight or if this question has already been addressed in a previous thread and I just didn't see it, I would gratefully appreciate your thoughts and/or a link to the relevant thread.</p>
<p>I really don’t think that competitive describes the academic environment at Wellesley. It’s more that students generally hold themselves to high standards. I find that students are willing to help each other out. </p>
<p>That being said, many students consider a B or B+ a really good grade. </p>
<p>Socializing. In short, if you want it, you can make it happen.</p>
<p>As far as socializing, plenty of people do it. I’m not much of a party person, but I socialized a lot for me last semester while taking 5 classes and did very well overall (important aside: it depends on what you mean by excellent grades. If you are expecting to replicate your 3.93 GPA at Wellesley, revise your expectations, wholly aside from the question of socializing. Yes, someone does that well each year. It probably won’t be you! :)). For my observations of my friends and acquaintances, I wouldn’t say that socializing really affected any of their grades. Poor time and responsibility management in general, of which socializing is a part but not the only part, are the real culprit. A big aspect of life is knowing when to say no, I can’t–whether that be for an extra class that is just too much work, your eighth extracurricular activity, or a party on a weekend when you really need to lock yourself in your room and work. </p>
<p>I agree with “students hold themselves to high standards” being the type of competition at Wellesley. Different majors also have different feelings in terms of competition/interaction between the majors. I don’t buy that any of the majors are cutthroat–one of my majors in Economics, and this would be the one more likely to be criticized in this fashion, so I think I speak from a position of some authority–but the feeling is different. </p>
<p>Generally I think that hard work = better grades–absolutely. Of course I can’t promise that you’ll never meet a course where you work really hard to get a mediocre grade and are happy for it–that happens too, and it’s happened to me! For me at least, the biggest factor in terms of getting a good grade has been interest in a class. Not that I don’t work hard or get bad grades in the classes I’m less interested in, but it really takes a lot of effort to get As and A-s at Wellesley, and personally I find that level of effort difficult to muster for a class you’re not that interested in. Maybe that seems like obvious advice, but I think a lot of people end up with a schedule they don’t really like but stick with for no very good reason and that tends to turn into an unhappy and unproductive semester.</p>
<p>Time management and balance are the keys to socializing and maintaining good grades. You will envy those girls who can party every Friday and Saturday night and still have better grades than you (or perhaps you will be one of those girls, and I will envy you instead!)</p>
<p>In fact, Wellesley’s policy has simply brought grades into line with private schools in general.<br>
At gradeinflation dot com, you can find a lot of information on this. Wellesley’s average grade had creeped up to 3.55 in 2000, which was quite high for private colleges. They simply brought the average down to 3.31, essentially at the average of private schools. If you go to the site, you can get information about many schools at the bottom of the page. It is notable that public (state) schools are significantly lower. Although the data is incomplete (but reasonably well documented as to source), you can see that most comparable schools have similar mean GPAs to Wellesley, even without a policy.</p>
<p>^Ha.ha.ha. Duke definitely has grade inflation. Certain professors in the econ department agree with me on this as well (they used to teach there).</p>