<p>Does anyone know if grade inflation exists at Stanford? If so, is it more prevalent in humanities courses than math/science courses and is it as significant a practice as it is at Stanford's rival institutions, Harvard, Yale, etc.</p>
<p>I've heard that it's hard to fail but even harder to get an A.</p>
<p>I think it depends on the department. My son managed 3 A's as a high school sophomore, in the Psychology and Religion departments.</p>
<p>Anecdotally, I've heard that Harvard has much more grade inflation than Stanford does. That being said, Stanford does practice some grade inflation. I half agree with fuzzylogic; it is indeed hard to fail, but it is probably not as hard to get an A. This does depend on the course. The average grade here is usually a B rather than a C. This is especially nice in chemistry/math/physics classes when the mean raw score on a test might be around 50%; the professor usually will scale it so that the mean is a B. Tests are often very difficult because a) it is hoped that students will be able to take their knowledge further and use the concepts they learned to do more difficult problems and b) there needs to be some sort of grade distribution. Thus, it's not as if the courses are easy and everyone gets an A. Courses are quite difficult, but the curve helps.</p>
<p>In the few non-science classes that I've taken, I have found the grading to be fair; I'm not sure what else to say besides that. They usually don't reveal the mean grade on a paper, so I can't tell how things are overall. As a freshman, I floated around B+/A- on my papers, which I thought I deserved. Not too nice, not too mean.</p>
<p>The way I think of it, everyone here is very smart. We're used to getting A's, and that changes for many people in college. As I mentioned above, you're expected to go above and beyond the principles taught in lecture. If you can apply those basic principles, it's worth a B. However, you need to be able to integrate those concepts to solve a new, more difficult problem if you want an A. Some of us work extremely hard and are still unable to get A's, while it's a breeze for others. So, for those of us who work hard and can get 70% on a test but not 90%+ like those extraordinary students, the mild grade inflation cuts us some slack. It's kind of like, "You're not the top in your class, but we know you worked damn hard and so here's a B instead of a C."</p>
<p>^celest pretty much summed it up.</p>
<p>what about in engineering classes? is classes graded on a curve? high levels of competition?</p>