<p>Well? If inflation, what % of students get A’s? And how easy is it relative to other ivies and public schools?</p>
<p>Well, since I have attended all the ivies and all the public schools......</p>
<p>Don't worry about it.</p>
<p>So what's your pt?</p>
<p>I think he means that you shouldn't be basing your decision on how arduous or not a school is. Pick a school that you feel is conducive to your own needs.</p>
<p>I wouldn't say that Brown inflates or deflates necessarily; I would just say that in comparison to a lot of other schools, the whole grading paradigm is different. Because there are only grades of A, B, and C (failing means you don't get credit and the class disappears from your record), there seems to be the mindset among students (at least in my experience with my peers) that A is above average, B is average, and C is below average. I suspect that at other schools where D and F exist as possible transcript grades, the perception would be a little bit different. Whether or not professors share my perception, I cannot say, but if C is the lowest grade one can get, then a C is certainly not "average." Is that a scientific response? No. Does that count as grade inflation if B seems average? I'm not sure. I think it's just different.</p>
<p>it depends on what classes you take. in science classes ~25-30% of the class will get A's (in general). In a humanities or social science class, the number is closer to 40 or 50%.</p>
<p>I would imagine that there is more inflation, especially because many teachers would be more prone to round from a d to a c if they knew that otherwise the student wouldn't get any credit. There is inflation almost everywhere though.</p>
<p>I know some students would rather get no credit and take the class again (if it's required or something) with a A or B than get a C. It's not like your record shows the NC.</p>
<p>Brown has grade inflation (if by inflation you mean that the students get high grades). So do all the other ivies, and so do most top schools. It's not a big deal. Brown probably has a bit more than other ivies/top schools but not by a significant degree.</p>
<p>Students getting high grades is not grade inflation. Inflation is students getting higher grades than are warranted.</p>
<p>Another thing to think about is that to some extent, the grading process at most competitive schools is self-selecting. That is, the students that are getting in (for the most part) are those who work hard, have good study habits, and are just generally smart. So it's not surprising that more students at these schools would receive high grades. Of course, not everyone at every top school is a model student, but I would say that a lot of what people call "inflation" in grading at the best schools in the country is really just a result of these schools having a higher percentage of the best students, who deserve the grades they get.</p>
<p>well said lisa. You have it right.</p>
<p>I agree with Lisa, too... I was just going by how people tend to use the term.</p>
<p>A family friend who is a professor (not a Brown) says that he has been teaching for 20 years, and every year he seems to be giving more good grades because the quality of the students keeps getting better and they do better work.</p>
<p>Well first of all these teachers get paid. Who will be more loved by students: A prof who gives 60% A's or a prof who gives 60% C's? I can tell you that the one that keep students happy at a 45K/year school will get the contract extension.</p>
<p>It ends up being unfair to everyone else; there's plenty of kids who work harder than your typical top-tier kid, but get the short end of the stick simply because they ended up at their public school. Statistically, a school in North Dakota may have lesser quality of students, but it has lesser quality academics also; it shouldn't be harder to get better grades than at a much more prestigeous school (often times, it is). At a school like Harvard, you just need a pulse to get an A or B in some classes; the same classes which take enormous amounts of work at other schools just to get a passing grade. This means that the argument that better students get better grades doesn't hold, since better students are usually a result of better academics (not just prestige). This is often not reflected in grades. That's grade inflation.
And trust me, college isn't high school, 150 points on your SAT's and 0.3 difference in GPA makes the difference between Brown and UConn, but in the long run it means almost nothing when you're comparing student quality in college. </p>
<p>And if it hasn't been brought up, i expect that the "we worked hard to deserve grade inflation!" argument is coming. I would refrain from calling a person who argues this a complete idiots, but i think that people who argue this are complete idiots.</p>
<p>I don't think lesser quality academics means easier grading. I mean, if you take math and science, those don't change based on the school. Calculus will still be calculus and no one is going to say "close enough" even if you're at a state school with a bad academic reputation. Maybe for the humanities more though.</p>
<p>Maybe, bullmoose, you shouldn't talk until you have spent a freakin' year at the school.</p>
<p>THEN you can make definitive claims......</p>
<p>Nothing anyone has written characterizes Brown as significantly different from most other schools - both of the undergrad institutions I attended maintained about a 3.5 for their average GPA awarded. I don't know of any American universities that truly consider a C average; B seems to be the current average grade today.</p>
<p>you guys claim Cornell is soooo grade deflated, but mean while it's median/average GPA is a 3.32, sound reallly low, well compared to stanford and brown, yes, but to its peers, not really. 3.32 is a B+.</p>
<p>Maybe, GHBrown, you're the one that shouldn't talk if you have nothing to contribute to the conversation. I have noticed a very curious trend that your open-minded feminist self seems to be having issues with other people's opinions.</p>
<p>And yes i am indeed saying that had you gone to a public school, your GPA would probably be lower with the same amount of work.</p>
<p>The discussion clearly deviated away from Brown to include elite schools notorious for "grade inflation" and that seems the current issue at hand.</p>
<p>Calculus may be calculus everywhere but students at more academically prestigious institutions should be held to much higher standarts than those at other schools, since they are most likely receiving a better and more personal instruction. This has nothing to do with elitism, rather, if a school like Brown prides itself on its academic reputation, then it should expect more from its calculus students than other schools. If this were implemented, you would not see the huge disparity between an average grade in introductory Calculus at a place like Brown and a public school where the same calculus (I don't have numbers but i can almost surely say that there's easily an entire grade difference in averages). It's late and i dont know if this makes sense but I'm pretty sure it does enough so to keep idiotic replys away.</p>
<p>Bullmoose, "contract extension" ?</p>
<p>Do you understand how Universities work?</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenure%5B/url%5D">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenure</a></p>