<p>what does cornell have?</p>
<p>Grade inflation. But no more so than Harvard or Stanford. Avg. GPA is around 3.4.</p>
<p>Average GPA is not a 3.4. And it is a well-known fact that the University does not calculate broad-based GPAs. Please stop posting wrong information.</p>
<p>I would say that it really depends on the major and the class. Some classes make it difficult to get As, some make it easy, so I think it all balances out in the end. I think people believe that there is grade DEflation because of the classes that grade based on the mean. When everyone in the class is pretty smart, you can think that you "deserve" an A, but then get a C in the class.</p>
<p>You can get some idea, by college, from </p>
<p>Weighting the GPAs by enrollment numbers using
<a href="http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000176.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000176.pdf</a> and
<a href="http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000177.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://dpb.cornell.edu/documents/1000177.pdf</a></p>
<p>gives us an estimated average GPA of 3.147. I exclude internal transfer division students, and I don't know over what years the GPAs were calculated (I think they're at least a few years old) but the enrollment numbers are the most recent available. If there were grade inflation average GPA should now be a little higher. Note that this is for current students, and not graduates. Since GPAs generally increase over college tenure, you'd expect the mean graduate GPA to be a little higher also.</p>
<p><em>edit</em> whoops, I just realized the footnote on the first link. Since the average GPA was calculated by the classes offered by the college, this is a very rough estimate indeed.</p>
<p>I wouldn't call it grade inflation, but it's not really grade deflation either.</p>
<p>Rendeli's numbers are also ten years old. Norcalguy is right. It's closer to a 3.4. </p>
<p>There was an article in The Atlantic Monthly about Cornell's grade inflation two years ago. It's two stories down on the following link:</p>
<p>Primary</a> Sources </p>
<p>Of course, for incoming students next year, you won't have to worry about your actual GPA as much, as all of your grades will be posted next to the median grade in each class on your transcript. It will make things a lot easier for employers and graduate schools to separate the wheat from the chaff.</p>
<p>And generally speaking employers know that Cornell is a rigorous place filled with smart kids. We'll look at kids with a 3.3-3.5 from Cornell, but only look at kids with over a 3.75 from a big state university.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Average GPA is not a 3.4. And it is a well-known fact that the University does not calculate broad-based GPAs. Please stop posting wrong information.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Whatever. If it makes you feel better about your own GPA...</p>
<p>For everyone else:
<a href="http://www.arts.cornell.edu/econ/azussman/quest.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.arts.cornell.edu/econ/azussman/quest.pdf</a></p>
<p>57 page paper examining the rampant grade inflation and grade compression witnessed at Cornell over the last 15 years. If you're too lazy, skip to page 54. Avg. GPA at Cornell was around a 3.3 four years ago.</p>
<p>The link posted by Rendeli is from 1996 (notice it says in the url the meeting was held on 3/13/96). According to his calculations, avg. GPA at Cornell was 3.15 in 1996. According to the link I gave, the avg. GPA was approx. 3.17 in 1996. </p>
<p>Cornell DOES publish median grade reports. In fact, that's the reason why we have grade inflation in the first place. Students keep picking the easy courses!</p>
<p>Cornell</a> University Registrar: Median Grades</p>
<p>A few courses (with enrollments under 10) are excluded but you can see how this makes it very easy to calculate an average/median GPA for Cornell as a whole.</p>
<p>Look, I did premed at Cornell. I know it's challenging. We knock the crap out of the MCAT. But I also know that Cornell is full of whiners. It's self-perpetuating. People come to Cornell expecting it to be grade deflated and when their grades don't go their way, they think it's due to the (non-existent) grade deflation. Take responsibility for your own grades and you'll do fine.</p>
<p>Norcalguy is right. There is a certain subset of the Cornell population that whines. Do us a favor and if you do go to Cornell, don't whine about your grades. Or better yet, go somewhere else.</p>
<p>There are a lot worse things in the world than a B instead of a B+. Like cancer. Or miscarriages. Or George W. Bush.</p>
<p>No. That article does not reflect actual average GPAs (It says average Cornell grade, not average Cornell GPA). It is a measure of the mean grades given out in classes. It means that enrollment in classes with higher median grades has increased and that the average grade in classes given to students is a 3.4 (or slightly above a B+). This does not mean that the average GPA of all students is a 3.4 because there is no way to determine the exact combination of every class that every student took based on this information. Nor does it mean that all classes curve to a B+. As for grade inflation, if you are a student who picks classes solely based on the median grade, then your average GPA may be inflated, but if you are a student who takes classes based on requirements and interests, then your GPA may be deflated, or may be what it is supposed to be.</p>
<p>You probably didn't even read the original article correctly, and I'm perfectly happy with my GPA -graduated with honors. I'm glad to see that maybe one of us can read a scientific article properly. There are also additional pointers:</p>
<p>"an improvement in the quality of students may have been an important determinant of grade inflation — our estimates show that it explains about a third of the increase in grades."</p>
<p>Average GPA has probably increased slightly in the last few years due to online access to median grade reports. More students enrolling in classes with a higher median grade means an increase in GPA, but again the university does not calculate broad based GPAs. However, this is no where close to the grading system at Harvard, where 90% of grades given to freshmen were As.</p>
<p>look...the only reason I am arguing about this is b/c your posts can give off the impression that classes at Cornell are getting easier, when this is not the case. The difficulty level of classes is not changing, just the number of students enrolling in "easier" classes.</p>
<p>Don't be silly. It's a well understood fact for us alums that classes at Cornell are always easier now than when we were on East Hill.</p>
<p>By the way, the number of alums posting on this board tonight proves two things:</p>
<p>1) Cornell alums really liked their time at Cornell.
2) Most Cornell students have better uses of their time. Like studying. Or partying on a Thursday night.</p>
<p>or writing papers about modern medicine and kosher food laws :-D</p>
<p>Indeed, the article says it's for the average grade given in CAS classes. There are still some problems actually trying to figure out what students' average GPAs would be.
First, the 3.33-ish figure for 2003 would probably not include independent study, honors research, or TAing (not classes), which all tend to give out A's. This would bias the 3.33 figure downwards.
Second, we don't know anything about class-grades in other colleges, or about cross-registrants. The bias here is ambiguous.
Third, suppose that the best students were both achieving the highest grades and taking the most credits. I think this is intuitive, but since the authors did not control for workload we can't examine the coefficient to tell for sure. Then, the best students would be raising the observed student-class grade by a greater proportion than they would be raising their own GPA (because high ability students' high grades are watered down by their greater number of credits). This would bias the 3.33 figure upwards.
To illustrate the last point, suppose CAS consists of one good student who takes two classes and aces them both, and one bad student who takes one class and gets a B, and all classes are worth the same credits. Then the study would report three observations, for which the average GPA reported in Figure 4 would be a 3.666 (4+4+3/12). But obviously the average GPA among the two students is 3.5 (4.0 + 3.0 / 2).</p>
<p>Except I've found that the people who routinely take over 20+ credits tend to be the engineer and science majors rather than the history/sociology majors. Wouldn't that bias the GPA downwards if the people who are getting worse GPA's (science majors) are also the ones taking the higher course loads?</p>
<p>I think CAS is a fairly decent approx. of Cornell as a whole as it is right around the middle in terms of avg. GPA (based on the link you gave). In fact, your calculated weighted avg. was 3.14, which was not much different from CAS' avg. of 3.15. Is there any reason to suspect a disproportionate amount of grade inflation in CAS?</p>
<p>Just publishing the median grades makes your life easier. I and I'm sure the rest of you have used the median grade reports to pick out electives. This is an advantage students at most other colleges don't have. I don't know if the difficulty of the courses has changed but from the median grade reports it looks like a significant number of courses have A- medians (even without looking at the enrollment numbers).</p>
<p>Honestly, from what the numbers say and from what my gut tells me after 4 years at Cornell, I don't think Cornell is more difficult than Harvard or Stanford (that was the point of my original post). Especially, if you factor in the difference in the quality of the student bodies. I'm tired of Cornellians thinking their GPA's would be higher had they gone to Harvard.</p>
<p>Fair enough, norcal. I agree with you about the engineers, but the sample is just for Arts. Maybe the relationship is still backwards. Finally, it's just also worth noting that the article is talking about <em>movement</em> in the grade inflation, not the <em>level</em> of grade inflation. So Cornell could just be catching up to the levels of grade inflation at other schools. At an estimated rate of 0.01 point per year, it would be pretty slow.
So what about the <em>level</em>? I agree with norcal, in that I also think the belief that GPAs at Cornell are grossly deflated (eg for same student putting in the same effort) vis other ivies is overstated. And no one likes complainers who are envious of the high GPAs and gratuitous latin honors at Harvard <=P</p>
<p>Speaking of engineering, does anyone know where to find the avg GPA for engineering?</p>
<p>It seems like tons of As are given out... and what major is PAM?</p>