@BiffBrown : I am not talking as much about admit rate so much as the score range (which is a dubious metric itself I admit). Admit rates are deceptive. Chicago when it had an admit rate in the high 30s still had better students than most top 20s…and in addition to that, they were there for the academics so you expect them to do decently. I think you are putting too much stock in grading practices and less in intellectual rigor. If I compared the average MIT, Harvey Mudd, and maybe even CMU STEM course to most schools, they would require a substantially greater effort just to “pass” on a regular scale as those schools do not have as much content deflation and on average have more professors still willing to write very rigorous exams and give time consuming projects/p-sets, so I can care less if the medical school admissions officers give a bump to engineering majors. Even if they get grade inflation, the courseload they take is typically much tougher per semester than a normal pre-med say biology, chemistry, or even neuroscience major. Those 3 majors can pretty much space out the hard classes whereas you graduate later if you do that in engineering. And again, most engineering classes, even if we just talk BME are on average more intellectually rigorous than the pre-med core courses and commonly taken upper division coursework. The average pre-med would not willingly take upper division life science electives and courses that integrate math beyond algebra. It just isn’t comparable. Let MIT, CMU, and Mudd students have their inflation and an extra bump in admissions. It is deserved.
As far as I am concerned, many STEM teachers outside of the more STEM oriented places (Rice has strong engineering, but I will not put it next to strongholds like Stanford, MIT, CMU, Mudd, Caltech, and Berkeley’s engineering program), are like bands lowering the key of a song (intellectual rigor of a course) substantially and then the lead singer (the students) still cannot hit the notes. Like when I look at the math courses and biology courses commonly taken at places outside of the very elite and STEM institutes, I say: “Yeah those other schools perhaps do deserve the inflation and an extra bump”. I’m just not all that mad at it having compared the coursework of some of these places.
You are also choosing several schools where students attend them KNOWING they will have to work very hard because of the place’s reputation. You cannot say that for many non-STEM institutes including elite privates and publics. Seems students with good preparation expect them to be easier and work less hard as a result. And again, some flat out attended because they knew they would work have to work harder elsewhere. It is still not uncommon to see some JHU and Chicago bashing on this very website with most of it having to do with: “Why go to such stressful places when you can have fun”.
Also, Rice and Emory are strikingly similar I think. I am kind of amazed at anyone that thinks Rice is particularly more rigorous than Emory outside of maybe physics and math (which serve engineering students there). Kind of the same with WUSTL, but what I do notice with WUSTL is that the lower division STEM courses appear very rigorous (like on average, a bit more rigorous than its block of peers), however the gap between it and places like Emory, Rice, Cornell, and Brown really closes with upper division and intermediate courses. It appears that many of the more life science courses there, like in neuroscience start having numerous teachers rely on “rigorous looking”(they looked tough, but you could kind of tell that they were merely very specific scenarios that the students were kind of supposed to memorize. However, if you didn’t scrutinize close enough, you would think they were “applied”) multiple choice exams. Considering the fact that the incoming scores of WUSTL students suggest that they are already great at MC exams, and probably other low cognitive complexity items like fill-in-the blank and short answer, I don’t see why bother but it was notable that as expected, for courses that I did find that were run like that, they had very high averages (like mid 80s). And apparently math courses are not known to be that great there either (at least not versus the abilities of the student body). An old professor wrote a blog complaining about it actually. Like some of the intermediate courses, especially those with heavy engineering enrollment were apparently “cookbook” based. Some person who transferred to Columbia shamelessly said that the equivalent courses at Columbia were surprisingly more difficult, so WUSTL, like many places or almost every place has rigor, but has some rough patches too.
If these are in heavily subscribed to classes and departments, then the grades will show it and will be very sensitive to changes in SAT/ACT scores (if a STEM course does not overly rely on algorithmic problem solving, it probably will not be as sensitive to SAT/ACT scores so much as preparation levels OR raw talent and experience in that specific field). I am willing to bet that WUSTL is not the result of overly generous curving like some schools, but simply some courses being pitched too far below the potential of the students. Without investigating that, it is difficult to figure out which schools seem to be intentionally renorming grading practices to keep a competitive edge/chance against peers versus those who just don’t scale the academics to changing (supposedly increasing) abilities of students. Most STEM teachers’ priorities don’t really include teaching (if they are research track, STEM research is what brings money to the school), so they aren’t usually going to “crank up” their courses for students with higher scores. They don’t have time. If they used to assess lower order skills for the length of time they have been there, they will continue to do so and let their grades float upwards to reflect the improvement of students’ ability to do low complexity tasks. It is what it is.
As for A’s…I don’t really know what they mean anywhere to be honest. I would need to see what type of courseload the student took, know about the folks they took courses with (thus the level of rigor), and many other things. I am sure a person at Emory could easily have a 4.0 semester taking ochem, bio, physics, and calc. if they are a solid student and just choose the lowest possible instructors for ochem, bio, and calc (you have no choice in physics). An A in those 3 could reflect easier than normal instruction in addition of self-selection of what are mostly weaker students into such sections (and thus less competition in case there is a curve and you are usually in the upper echelon of performers). I am sure it means something, but I just don’t know without context. Someone could very well be the best of the worst because there is so much variation per STEM course at Emory.
