<p>Just curious, does anyone have any opinnions about the grading at Columbia. Is it inflated, or deflated? I heard that some top schools like Harvard and Yale had really inflated grades. Anyway, maybe some Columbia students could answer, or anybody else for that matter.</p>
<p>yea, they'r inflated, but u dont see me complaining</p>
<p>Definitely inflated, just like any other Ivy. Dean's List in CC used to be 3.3 and like 70% of the people made it, so they raised it to 3.5. I think over half still make it. If you want the exact stats on grade inflation, search the Spec for the data.</p>
<p>Deans list in CC is a 3.6 and in SEAS it is 3.5.</p>
<p>Was it raised from 3.5 to 3.6 at some point? I thought I remember it being raised from 3.3 to 3.5.</p>
<p>Do Med Schools take this into account? I've heard Medical Schools are GPA whores and coming from an Ivy Undergrad - would they see a high 3.0 as less valuable coming from an Ivy than a high 3.0 then another well known school?</p>
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Was it raised from 3.5 to 3.6 at some point? I thought I remember it being raised from 3.3 to 3.5.
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<p>I'm guessing from your screenname that you graduated in '02...I started in Fall '03 and have always been told that it is a 3.6 in CC</p>
<p>This is great, because I was afraid that cc might be deflated, like jhu or something.
LoJT-
I would think that an Ivy gpa would be better, but I could be wrong</p>
<p>Isn't the question: what percentage of CC students makes the 3.6 required for Dean's List each semester? or, what percentage of each graduating class gets 3.6 or higher?</p>
<p>What is "Dean's List?"</p>
<p>NJ-Dean's List is like Honor Roll. You get the required GPA that semester, and they give you that honor. You can put on your resume "Columbia University Dean's List (Fall 2006, Spring 2007)."</p>
<p>LoJT-Med schools will also recognize that, despite your high inflated GPA, you're still competing against the best college kids in America at an Ivy. If you're really interested, there are websites where people post their medical school applications statistics, so you can see the types of schools Ivy kids with particular MCATs get into.</p>
<p>Sac--You might be able to extrapolate the graduating class numbers if had access to the cutoffs for summa/magna/cum laude. IIRC, magna (top 15%) is like 3.85 or something. That tells you something about the grade inflation, too. With A+'s, you've got a number of CC people who go on CULPA and find whatever 4 easy classes they can come up with.</p>
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A high GPA alone is not enough to earn Latin honors; the academic rigor of your transcript is also a factor, along with departmental recommendations. Twenty-five percent of the class is eventually selected for Latin honors.
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<p>About five percent are awarded summa, according to the website, and another 10% each magna and cum laude. (Versus Harvard, where about 90 percent graduate with some sort of honors. So, this is one place where Columbia takes a stand.) They say they consider the top 35%, with the implication that they eliminate some of those based on the rigor of the courseload. But, I didn't see any statement of what the specific grade point was that earned these honors in recent years.</p>
<p>I'm sure a lot of students do use Culpa to find easy classes. On the other hand, between core requirements and requirements for a major (and the fact that not all classes are offered every semester or even every year), I don't think it's as easy to escape some classes that are difficult for any particular student as it might be at some other universities. Difficult might mean a B, as opposed to a C in days past, but it's still an achievement to get As, is it not?</p>
<p>I think that's 1) a CYA in case of an extreme outlier and 2) intimidation. One of the deans (albeit, everyone's a dean) said that they just go down the GPA list. Are they really going to sit around and discuss 300 seniors' transcripts and snub some kid with a 3.8 in a cushy major like Sociology? What's "academic rigor," anyway -- number of credits per term? are admins going to make value judgements and say that science classes are more rigorous than cushy liberal arts classes? I think the Spec might have reported on latin honors cutoffs, if you want to bother searching for them.</p>
<p>Nobody with a high GPA is going to be a moron. But there are plenty of people with high GPAs who are either, or a combination of, very hard workers, people who game the system, people who grade-grubbers, etc. These are the types of people who get unremarkable scores on grad school tests (MCAT, LSAT, GRE, etc.) that are clearly not commersurate with what you'd expect from someone with a high Ivy GPA. Of course, there are also plenty of really smart people with high GPAs.</p>
<p>Plenty of profs (even in the science classes) inflate grades by way of the A+. The A+ is often used to shift the entire grading scale up by 1/3 of a grade. So, the people who would normally get the A-'s end up getting an A in a class with a lot of A+'s.</p>
<p>And, there are some majors where the in-major classes are highly inflated. The cushy departments like the reputation of being easy, so that they get a good number of people to major in it. Typical race to the bottom.</p>
<p>Yes, I agree the scenario of deans discussing transcripts is unlikely. I assumed they might look at unit load rather than debating the hardships of American Studies vs astrophysics. :) There have always been cushy majors, and grade grubbers. The discussion of honors was only an attempt to get at the grade inflation issue from another direction.</p>
<p>I don't even think if they could fairly look at unit load. If they reward someone who took a heavy overload, it would mean that they would have to punish someone who took a normal 15 credit / term load (which is on track to graduate in 4 years). And, should someone who took 24 units but was in over his head reap that big a reward? Perhaps not.</p>