<p>does anyone know which top school have the highest grade inflation? (lets say top schools as in nationally ranked 1-30)</p>
<p>This is to help all pre meds!</p>
<p>Ill start the list:
Harvard
Yale
Princeton
Duke
Brown</p>
<p>Princeton is not known as a grade deflater.</p>
<p>Eh? Grade deflater? I thought it was only inflation.</p>
<p>ya we r only listing grade inflation ridden schools.</p>
<p>come on ppl! bumppp</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/3446250-post27.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/3446250-post27.html</a></p>
<p><a href=“Negative%20numbers%20are%20grade%20deflated%20and%20positive%20numbers%20are%20inflated.”>quote</a>
MIT -2.646136
Penn -1.486136
Johns Hopkins -1.246136
Swarthmore -1.246136
UC Irvine -1.046136
Dartmouth -1.046136
Princeton University -0.966136
Univ. of Chicago -0.966136
Harvard University -0.926136
Williams College -0.886136
Princeton -0.806136
Yale -0.766136
Cornell -0.686136
Duke University -0.686136
Stanford -0.646136
UC - Berkeley -0.646136
Haverford College -0.646136
Oberlin College -0.646136
Pomona -0.646136
Univ. of Virginia -0.526136
Rice -0.446136
Northwestern University -0.406136
Emory -0.406136
Columbia Univ. - Columbia College -0.326136
Univ. of Texas -0.286136
Georgetown University -0.246136
Boston University -0.206136
Univ. of Michigan - Ann Arbor -0.206136
Brown -0.166136
Emory -0.166136
Bryn Mawr College -0.046136
Tufts University -0.006136
Univ. of Rochester 0.033864
Brandeis University 0.113864
UCLA 0.153864
Univ. of Southern California 0.193864
Villanova University 0.353864
Baylor Univ. 0.353864
Univ. of Massachusetts - Amherst 0.353864
Boston College 0.373864</p>
<p>…</p>
<p>St. John’s Univ.-Jamaica 2.353864
Temple University 2.353864
Univ. of North Texas 2.753864
Jackson State University 3.153864
[/quote]
</p>
<p>^ Just an observation:</p>
<p>I arbitrarily select the top 16 deflation schools from your list:</p>
<p>MIT -2.646136
Penn -1.486136
Johns Hopkins -1.246136
Swarthmore -1.246136
UC Irvine -1.046136
Dartmouth -1.046136
Princeton University -0.966136
Univ. of Chicago -0.966136
Harvard University -0.926136
Williams College -0.886136
Princeton -0.806136
Yale -0.766136
Cornell -0.686136
Duke University -0.686136
Stanford -0.646136
UC - Berkeley -0.646136</p>
<p>I notice that:
- Only two public schools (Irvine and Berkeley) are on the list of these 16 schools.
- Almost all of them are top/elite schools (maybe with the exception of UC Irvine.)
- Quite a high pecentage of these schools produce many successful premeds every year – likely partly due to the fact that a higher percentage of the students there are good at the standardized test (also better advising?)
- Many of these schools are sort of well known for their science program (or engineering in the case of MIT and possibly UPenn, Berkeley, Stanford) or somewhat intensive liberal art programs (Dartmouth, Smarthmore, Williams – I do know Dartmouth is an Ivy, not a LAC. But its program seems to be quite liberal art-ish to me, e.g., very cohesive student body, including a very strong foreign language program.)</p>
<p>I guess this list is likely not be one many people on this forum would expect to see. Hopefully, they will be bothered enough to dig in to see how you come up with this list using the objective method that you come up with :)</p>
<p>A related question is which school is the most deflated school if you consider the premed students only, excluding all other students.</p>
<p>there’s no such thing as grade inflation</p>
<p>You, my friend, are misinformed. Or know something the rest of us don’t. Explain!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Absolute BS.</p>
<p>
One important note (described fully in the thread linked) is that these numbers come only from students who applied to law school. I agree that premed numbers (or even overall numbers) would be more useful – but, sadly, this is the data I had available to me at the time.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>“grade inflation” is basically a term used by people who go to less competitive schools to boost their damaged egos. Especially in science/math/engineering classes, you are competing with your classmates…there is a world of difference between competing with the most motivated and brightest students in the country at an institution like Harvard/Yale/Stanford/Columbia (let’s call these “school A”) as opposed to competing with students in a school that has an 80% admit rate (let’s call these “school B”). Not only is there this added level of competition, professors might choose to present tougher material in order to challenge their audience. So say we have a student who achieved the class average at school A and a student who did the same at school B…have those two students shown the same level of comprehension and do they deserve the same grade? Remember, grades are relative…so the person at school A did “average” relative to the best and the brightest kids in the country whereas the person at school B did average compared to a much less competitive pool. So if the average student at Harvard and the average student at “school B” were to both receive a C for their efforts then why would anyone ever go to a school like Harvard/Yale etc and be average when they can go to “school B” and be top of the class? As a result top schools with a highly competitive student body needs to factor in the inherent competitiveness of the students and difficulty of the class when awarding grades or else they’d loose many bright students who don’t want to risk getting screwed over at a competitive school and just choose the easy way out. </p>
<p>On the other hand grade deflation definitely exists. schools like Cornell (engineering) etc that have a bright student body but do not adjust their grades sufficiently to reflect this.</p>
<p>That’s not correct Shraf. Take a look at BDM’s numbers. Those control for LSAT score. Therefore, they are valid comparisons between schools. It takes into account everything you mentioned in your post.</p>
<p>
Just making sure you realize that the numbers are not “grade points” but standard deviations; Temple prelaw students would have GPAs 2.3 stdevs above the mean, controlled for LSAT score.</p>
<p>Sorry, I dont know what ‘Temple prelaw students would have GPAs 2.3 stdevs above the mean, controlled for LSAT score’ means.</p>
<p>Shraf,
Did you attend “school A” and “school B” to form such a definitive opinion? It sounds like you did. Which school was School “A” and School “B” that you have attended and took the same type of classes?</p>
<p>As the drumbeat for the “battle” seems to be getting louder and louder, I had better get outta here :)</p>
<p>
What I was saying is that Temple University’s 2.353864 doesn’t mean that you’d have a GPA 2.353864 higher than if you’d gone to, say, Tufts, just means that Temple pre-law students have a GPA 2.353864 standard deviations above the mean GPA for pre-law students (the numbers came from data on pre-law students). Some people might say this is because “Tufts is harder” or “Temple is easier” or “there’s more competition at school X vs school Y”, but that would be wrong because the numbers also account for differences in LSAT scores (which give a rough standardized measure of the quality of pre-law students at a school).</p>
<p>So what do those numbers say about Temple?</p>
<p>Well I don’t know what the mean or standard deviation are for that dataset, maybe BDM can help us out? But essentially it means that Temple is grade inflated relative to most of the schools on that list.</p>
<p>Keep in mind, though, that those numbers were only for pre-law students, not pre-med or other tracks and majors.</p>
<p>Pre-law majors or people who went on to law school or both?</p>