<p>I REALLY want to go to Smith College but I worry about the grade deflation there. I have heard that the humanities classes there are really difficult to get A's in and that students "bite and beg" to get B's. Is this generally true? I want to be a government and history major and hopefully go to a prestigous Law School like Harvard or Yale so I'm really scared about going somewhere for my undergrad where I will be begging for a 3.3. Also, I've heard some negative things about the History program at Yale but I've also heard many good things so what seems to be the general consensus?
Any thoughts?</p>
<p>I’m not sure who’s telling you these things, is it an actual current student? In terms of grade deflation, it varies widely from class to class and also professor to professor. I had one English prof tell us on the first day that he “didn’t give A’s”, except on perfect work, and since it was impossible for us to do 100% perfect work, we shouldn’t even think about it. I got an A- on one paper in that class, but I worked really really hard at it. However, not all profs are like that. Most don’t go in with the attitude of “not giving A’s”. </p>
<p>Still, it’s important to keep in mind that college isn’t high school. If you’re a straight-A student right now, you probably aren’t going to be one in college. And that’s ok. Smith has lots of grads that go on to Ivy League grad programs. They don’t have a lot of students with a 4.0 average.</p>
<p>You definitely have to work at it if you want A’s a Smith but I wouldn’t say it’s impossible and I wouldn’t say that students “bite and beg” to get anything. It comes down to doing your reading, writing good papers, and studying for your finals. Basically solid study skills. If you don’t have that now, you’ll have to develop it very quickly on arrival. If you do the work and go to class, you will earn good grades. </p>
<p>Two final thoughts: 1) it’s way too early to start worrying about grade deflation. You’re not even accepted yet! 2) you should not turn down a college because you think it will be too hard to achieve a certain letter grade. that’s not a good way to set yourself on the road to a top law program. Don’t be afraid of rigor and challenge. Just work hard, do your best, and accept what you then earn.</p>
<p>Read S&P’s post again. Then read it one more time, this time more carefully.</p>
<p>You won’t get much out of your college education, wherever it is, if you are overly concerned with grades. Good grades come with good work, and graduate and professional programs look for that good work. </p>
<p>That said, I’ve come to the conclusion that Smith has grade INFLATION rather than deflation. The top ten percent of the class of 2010 had four-year GPAs of 3.8 and above. Most of those majored in the humanities and social sciences – it’s much more difficult to get that level of GPA in the sciences and engineering, although many did. If you can find the info for other colleges, you’ll see that the top ten percent is rarely, if ever, higher than that. Many have much lower top ten percent GPAs. When you talk about Smith’s Latin Honors, which discounts the first year, the GPA cut-offs are even higher. You have to get well over a 3.8 for magna cum laude, which means that many students have GPAs that approach 4.0 in their last three years.</p>
<p>Note that I wrote about the grades of the top ten percent to show that Smith grades are higher or at least equal to those given at peer institutions. But what about the other 90 percent? Just as you saw in high school, there are top students and bottom students, with a huge chunk of “average” students in between. The difference is that EVERYONE at Smith was a good high school student, so the bottom of the class is filled with those who might have been among the top ten percent of their high school class. This looks like grade deflation, but the truth is that not everyone can get a 3.8 or above at the college level. Not everyone can be the top ten percent, or even the top 25 percent (which I think cum laude is.) You will always get students who got As in high school but who get Bs and below at Smith.</p>
<p>Students arrive with varied levels of preparation, and you may not know how strong/weak your high school really is until you tackle college work. My advice is to attend the best college that feels right for you, and then worry about grades, course by course, semester by semester.</p>
<p>Thank you so much for your responses, both of you! They were so insightful and calming. I was actually reading an old thread on College Confidentail where parents and students alike were complaining about the rigour of Smith and how impossible it was to get good grades and it kind of freaked me out!! But if Smith really is the way you both describe it then I have absolutely no qualms about going there. I’ve actually met with a professor from Smith who teaches history(my intended major) and she was telling me how if any of her students get B’s on papers then she’ll let them rewrite those papers until they get an A. Also, on my tour the tourguide was telling me about how everyone wants the students at Smith to do well and get good grades and how the professors go out of thier way to make sure their students do well. I’m going to discount most of what I read in that thread!</p>
<p>You shouldn’t discount that thread – everyone there was being honest and sharing personal experiences. Although I don’t know the exact thread you read, I vaguely remember such a discussion. If I remember correctly, one of the parents who posted there now has a daughter who is getting mostly As and A-s. The transition between high school and college isn’t always easy – and that’s true across the country.</p>
<p>I’m actually really scared about the transition from high school to college. My school always boasts about how its students do really well in the college environment because they are so used to exceling in challenging classes in high school. By the time I graduate in June I will have taken 8 AP classes and I did relatively well on the 4 AP Exams I took last year. I know this doesn’t really indicate anything and I shouldn’t go into college thinking I’m going to do well just because of how I did in high school. All I hope is that my study skills suffice me enough so that I do not fail anything or get anything below a B- or am too overwhelmed by a college workload.</p>
<p>Don’t be so anxious! Your undergraduate years should be about coming into your own, both intellectually and personally, and, if you find the right college, are TONS of fun. </p>
<p>And your guidance counselor may be dead-on about your college prep. My daughter felt fully prepared for Smith, so you might be as well. You won’t really know, however, until you get there.</p>
<p>Haha, I’m known for stressing out way too much about things! But don’t worry if I am lucky enough to get into Smith then I will make my best effort to have fun and succeed in my academics! Once again, thanks so much for all of your insight :)</p>
<p>On one hand: read both MWFN’s and S&P’s posts yet again. Smith is funny…I’ve seen two students consoling a third about getting a B+ but each of them would have died if they had gotten the same B+. Competition is very mostly internal to the individual student. There’s a large number of students who are happy if they get “reasonably good grades,” such being an elastic definition. </p>
<p>But the ambitious and the driven work at it and I would largely go along with MWFN about there being grade inflation, not deflation.</p>
<p>Not sure what to tell you about transition from high school to Smith. D said that she could spot immediately those students who had good prep for college and those whose prep was so-so; the latter were somewhat in shock, particularly about standards for writing, despite the same near-A high school GPA’s. </p>
<p>D got outstanding grades at Smith but, while not a grade grubber, she worked her butt off to get them. I think second semester first year was probably toughest for her. (Course selection matters. She was one of three first-years in a second year course and the “speed of the pitching” was pretty fast and the standards for writing were pretty high…she got one of three A- grades in the class but it extended her a <em>lot</em>. And that experience really paid off the following year.)</p>
<p>Well, okay, my daughter also worked her butt off to get good grades, and some of her friends worked their butts off to get not-as-good grades. You do have to work hard at Smith. It doesn’t have an excellent educational reputation for nothing.</p>
<p>I will 2nd or 3rd the part about sciences being tougher. My D works really hard in her Sci classes esp Chem and does well most but not all of the time and when we were visiting last weekend most of her friends who were science majors were spending most of the weekend studying.</p>
<p>Well, I wasn’t a science major, but I too spent most of my weekends studying (and writing). A lot of that was to make a pitiful attempt to catch up on my language work load that never seemed to end. <em>sigh</em> those were the days. </p>
<p>The transition is one of those things a lot of high school students worry about that they probably shouldn’t. You can’t control what’s going to happen. You can’t prepare for it. You just have to dive in and hope you figure out the swimming part once you hit the water. </p>
<p>My main observation from my first year was not that the work was so much harder than what I had done in high school, but there was a lot more of it, and it was more substantial. Instead of doing busy work homework every night (like exercises or worksheets or prepping for mini-quizzes), I was working on lots of papers that were longer than my high school papers and required a greater depth of analysis. I was doing reading, like I would in high school, but of primary sources instead of textbooks, and what we might have a week to cover in high school, I now had to read in a day. Essentially, what you do in a semester at college, you would spend a year doing in high school. But you know, it’s like the cold New England weather, you figure out how to cope and pretty soon it just feels completely normal and comfortable. </p>
<p>But the nice thing is that you don’t have all your classes every day, so you at least usually have one day in between to work on things for the next days class. though the bad part is that profs don’t really realize you have OTHER classes on your “off” days, so that can be a challenge. Another nice thing is that while you might be assigned a certain set of exercises in your French book or a certain chapter of reading, no one is going to collect the exercises or check to make sure you finished the chapter. It’s up to you to craft your study schedule and prioritize your time. Slack off and you’ll pay for it eventually, but I definitely would skip some french exercises when I needed the time to devote to an English paper. Having that control and freedom was really nice, though again, you have to learn how to handle it responsibly.</p>
<p>The third paragraph in S&P’s last post captures some of what I mean by “the speed of the pitching.” And the last paragraph about prioritizing and time management bears re-reading too.</p>
<p>There really should be a “Collected Posts of S&P” book or something made available to Smith students.</p>
<p>BTW, harsher grading does not necessarily equal more work, although sometimes it does. Every course is different. I agree with both S&P and TD that writing skills can make the difference – and not just in the humanities. Students who write well, who have the critical thinking skills to give their content complexity, and who can read fairly quickly have an advantage. And if you can also manage your time, you’re golden.</p>
<p>My D took lots of courses outside of her major, and she found that the courses she took in English, history, and government were particularly rich. Lots of reading. Lots of writing. And tons of fascinating discussions and lectures. The percentage of As given out may have been higher than in her pure science courses, but the intellectual engagement-- that is, the back-and-forth analysis between professor and students – was also probably higher. Just writing this makes me want to return to my own undergraduate days!</p>
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<p>I second that! I love that she still spends time here to offer advice to both prospective and current students. She’s a real Smithie.</p>
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This is what I found remarkable about Smith. A discussion would start in class, be taken up again at lunch, continued at dinner, and resurface when people took late night break before bed (or more studying…). I make no claim that this kind of atmosphere is unique but it’s certainly not the norm.</p>
<p>Ditto, MWFN and TD! I’m so delighted for our daughter and I’m so envious!</p>