<p>Professors at the U of C are known for grading students very hard, and, overall, the school is known for its grade deflation. I was wondering how graduate programs view the grades of students from the U of C versus students from comparable schools.</p>
<p>I suspect that most leading graduate programs in popular academic fields, as well as the most popular professional schools, have a very, very accurate idea of the range of grades to expect from Chicago students, and how to tell the difference between great, very good, and OK grades there. Lots of programs/schools may see dozens of applications from Chicago (and its competitors) every year. They know way more than you (and certainly I) do about grading at Chicago vs. grading elsewhere, and how to compare one type of apples to another type of apples.</p>
<p>For academic programs, faculty recommendations are probably a huge difference-maker, and reviewing an applicant's actual work, and interviews. I'm sure many Chicago students get serious consideration.</p>
<p>For things like law, medicine, B-school (where GPA is much less important than some other factors) -- lots of Chicago students wind up going to lots of places, so one way or another the GPA assessment works out.</p>
<p>My sense is that high school students spend far too much mental energy worrying about whether grade inflation or lack thereof at college will help or hurt them get into Harvard Law School, etc.</p>
<p>I'm sure you're right in your assessment... </p>
<p>(But just fyi, I'm not in high school. I go to U of C and I was just thinking about these issues...)</p>
<p>When I visited UChicago and attended the premedical seminar, the professor said that graduate schools do consider the difficulty in earning a good GPA.</p>
<p>Sorry, Cosmos. I didn't mean to insult you. I do get exasperated sometimes reading posts by high school juniors who are scheming about their law school admissions.</p>
<ol>
<li> There is actually a lot of conflicting evidence out there. In the Math Majors thread, a recent graduate states it as gospel that math majors have trouble getting jobs and grad school placements because of their low GPAs, and I have to trust that he's not completely off base. On the other hand, my rising fourth-year kid knows plenty of people with unsensational GPAs that are heading off to medical school or graduate school.</li>
</ol>
<p>When she was in 12th grade and hesitating a few days before committing to Chicago, our next-door neighbor -- who at the time was a key faculty member for the MD/PhD program at a mid-level medical school -- told her, "Don't you realize that when it comes time to apply to graduate school, the University of Chicago really means something?" Now, how much it means is open to question, but that was an honest response from the horse's mouth, as it were.</p>
<ol>
<li> Harvard Law School probably knows more about grades at Chicago and, say, Brown (or Harvard) than the people at those colleges do. Every year, it gets dozens, maybe hundreds of applications from students who have graduated from each college in the past 4-5 years. If people there care, they can easily track the grade distribution at each college, based on major. They can track the grade distribution based on LSAT scores. And, what's more, they can track the correlation between undergraduate grades and law school grades for any particular LSAT level. The only people in a position to know whether an A- Economics major at Chicago is equivalent to an A Economics major at Brown would be graduate Econ programs and top law and business schools.</li>
</ol>
<p>That's a ton of information. I don't know how much of it they use, but I'm confident no one throws Chicago students' applications in the wastebasket because they only have 3.7 GPAs.</p>
<ol>
<li> That said, I suspect that grades at Chicago are not as far below grades at many of its competitors as people think. Maybe there are a few places with extreme grade inflation. Maybe Chicago grades are below the mean. But I don't think they are anything like a full half grade below, probably more like 0.1 (out of 4.3). Students complain about tough grading elsewhere, too.</li>
</ol>
<p>After seeing how many kids graduated with honors last Saturday, I think JHS is on to something. Given that more than half the class had honors, given that the minimum GPA for honors for any program is 3.25 (some are higher), I think it fair (and mathematically valid) to assume that the median GPA is north of 3.3.</p>
<p>I will try to remember to do an actual count tonight.</p>
<p>The minimum GPA for Dean's List is 3.25. For honors it's 3.5</p>
<p>Cosmos,</p>
<p>Uh, actually, no. From the UofC website:
[quote]
General Honors</p>
<p>The notation "Degree [BA/BS] in the College with General Honors [major] awarded [date]" appears on the transcripts of students who have earned an overall grade point average of 3.25 or above when they graduate from the College.
Departmental/Program Honors</p>
<p>The notation "Degree [BA/BS] in the College [major] with Honors awarded [date]" appears on the transcripts of students who have earned departmental/program honors. The requirements for such acknowledgement are individual to each program.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Specific programs:</p>
<p>Anthro Eligible candidates must have a GPA of 3.6 or higher in courses in the major and typically a GPA of 3.25 overall.</p>
<p>Chemistry: To earn a B.A. or B.S. degree with honors in chemistry, students must also have an overall GPA of 3.0 or higher. (in addition to a senior project and thesis.)</p>
<p>Econ: To be considered for honors, students must meet the following requirements: (1) a GPA of 3.5 or higher in the major and a GPA of 3.2 or higher overall,</p>
<p>Biological Sciences: To be eligible for honors, students must also have a GPA of 3.25 or higher both overall and in courses in the major based on all course work up to the final quarter of graduation.</p>
<p>Romance Languages and Literature: To qualify for honors, students must have an overall GPA of 3.0 or higher and an average GPA of 3.5 or higher in the major.</p>
<p>With that out of the way, here is the count from the graduation program:</p>
<p>751 students were "Awarded General Honors with the Bachelor's Degree". From the quote above, it is logical to conclude that these grads had GPA of 3.25 or more. By my count, 1022 graduated, so this means 73.5% had a GPA of 3.25 or more. </p>
<p>(I really hate know it alls who don't do their homework and post false information...)</p>
<p>
That reminded me of a post on another thread.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Most graduate programs require at least a 3.0 (3.5+ for the best programs), which isn't that hard to get. Anything higher is great but won't help you as much as good LORs, personal statement, and research.</p>
<p>These facts render the term "honors" somewhat meaningless since only students in the bottom quarter of the class did not graduate with honors. It seems that the GPA cutoff is too low.</p>
<p>A few things:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>You have to consider the graduation rate. Having 13% of your class drop out means those honors numbers are not as inflated as they seem, since as Dean Boyer pointed out, you don't see many transfers from Chicago moving up. It much more common to go from UChicago to UConn after flubbing your freshmen year than UChicago to Yale. When something like 1 in 8 students washes out, that is arguably important in evaluating those that make it. For instance, at the extreme, UChicago PhD students pride themselves on being one of say 12 out of 30 who makes it to the end of their program. </p></li>
<li><p>This honors inflation phenomenon would have to be relatively new. I only graduated from the University a few years back, and just slightly less than half the class got "Honors in the College," or a 3.25+. This trend seemed solid between my first and fourth years, and contributed greatly to the idea that GPA’s centered just below a B+. </p></li>
<li><p>I am only speculating, but one thing that could be driving this is the fact the underlying demographic shift in the collegiate body. Entering first years today are much stronger than first years five years ago, particularly at the bottom half of the class where the school’s heightened admissions selectivity has weeded out the intellectuals without any tangible work ethos / organization capacity (jump back to the late 90’s when the school was admitting the majority of those that applied). Consequently, it becomes harder for professors to dump curve derived C’s onto students, since there are less who are clearly just not doing the work to begin with. I remember on more than one occasion a professor made a remark to the tune of, “the midterm grades distributed nicely, the curve worked itself out, I don’t think you will be too surprised with how you did.” In contrast, I would wager professors today are more commonly inundated with work that fairly they cannot give a C+, in a sense beginning to approximate the Harvard grading paradox harped on by Harvey Mansfield (Student X and Y should both be ‘A’ students as far as the outside world is concerned, but as far as I am concerned X is superior to Y by multiple letter grades). </p></li>
<li><p>It’s true that letting 75% of the class graduate with honors cheapens the quality of the distinction. But I have more of an issue with majors using variable cutoffs without clear justification. It really would make things much easier if Chicago went to the Latin honors system that is widely used, where earning a Magna often makes reference to your overall, departmental, and thesis performance.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Graduate schools mainly care about research, but GPA is very important as well. Every Chicago student with a GPA of 3.5+ thinks their GPA is outstanding (it is!) but when, considering that each top grad school admits only 15 or so to its PhD program, not everyone can go to Harvard. If you have a 3.6-3.7 GPA, you're not going to get into a top-5 program, because I'd say that 10% of students here have GPAs of 3.8 or above.</p>
<p>I recently had a discussion with a math major who's completely freaking out about graduate school right now. This person said that almost everyone was disappointed with their graduate school options (this despite the fact that Chicago probably has THE HIGHEST math grad placement in the nation). I mean, come on, 4 people got into Stanford this year. That accounts for like, 50% of domestic acceptances. But if you're not in the top 5 in your department, you're really going to have trouble getting into a top 5 program because PhD admissions is just so damn competitive, and no one at Chicago realizes this, apparently. Also, Bs apparently aren't forgiven for Honors Analysis. So don't expect grad admissions to forgive any Bs in other courses either. Getting into grad school is hard. Seriously. Yes, Chicago is a top undergraduate school with great grad placement, but when the top 10 graduate schools admit only 50 or so domestic students each year, how many people from Chicago do you think will be represented in that group? You're going to work your butt off to get into a top graduate school, no matter which undergraduate institution you attend. I think the name Chicago gives you a huge advantage, though.</p>
<p>
[quote]
1. There is actually a lot of conflicting evidence out there. In the Math Majors thread, a recent graduate states it as gospel that math majors have trouble getting jobs and grad school placements because of their low GPAs, and I have to trust that he's not completely off base. On the other hand, my rising fourth-year kid knows plenty of people with unsensational GPAs that are heading off to medical school or graduate school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Come on, the guy just mocked people with 3.5+ GPAs as total nerds (I'm assuming he wasn't placing himself in that category), and he's at Courant, a top 10 graduate school. I don't get what he's complaining about.</p>
<p>phuriku,</p>
<p>I think you are wrong in your focus on grades, at least as far as you parse the numbers and the significance of a B. </p>
<p>Just as important as grades (in most cases, more important) are recommendations. As you yourself say, they "mainly care about research" and the quality of the research, as well as research potential, is largely shown through recommendations.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, a department cannot be calling 10 students each as being "among the top three students" that year! The math just does not work, even for a non-math major! This alone can account for much of the discrepancy you see in grad school admissions results. </p>
<p>The truth is we really do NOT know what anyone else's GPA is (has anyone else allowed you to peek at their online info?), even an individual applicant does not know how their recs are, and so forth. So too much of this gets obfuscated in a bit of BS.</p>
<p>If you want a real view of who the U considers the academic stars, look at who was elected PBK junior year. They were selected primarily on GPA and course load difficulty, with heavy weighting to GPA. These kids are the top 2-3% of the students academically. If they were also student marshalls, then you have a good indication of who the U thinks are the overall stars. This is much better than relying on word of mouth comments, given the opportunity for BS or worse.</p>
<p>BTW, it is sad that some posters knock academic stars by calling them "nerds". But doesn't that say more about the poster than about the students?</p>
<p>Having been involved in the graduate admissions process, recommendations and individual research promise is more important than a .2 or even .5 difference in GPA. Getting a phone call from a colleague or a strong letter is what counts. Meeting people at conferences and making a good impression doesn't hurt either. If there are meaningful publications, even better. Grad school, as opposed to professional school, is much less GPA driven.</p>
<p>All this is interesting... and makes me feel a little bit better about my GPA ending year 1 (although I do wish it were a little bit higher, is a 3.40 alright?). There was so much Core stuff this year... I feel like when I can actually start my major my GPA will go up.</p>
<p>My sense is that a 3.4 first-year GPA is fine. And that, yes, people often do better in classes that interest them and/or that they take with a few years of college under their belts.</p>
<p>I don't think graduate schools really care that much about Core classes. You'll just pay the price of being suspicious if you start getting too many Bs. Also, a 3.4 GPA at the end of the first year should be fine.</p>
<p>for the most part, the grades that count are grades in your prep work for grad school. For example, a prospective physics grad student should have great grades in math and physics. An anthro grad should might be judged on language skills in addition to social science work. </p>
<p>The catch is that a huge discrepancy between grad prep courses and the rest will be a big red flag. </p>
<p>It bears repeating: Professional school admissions are usually rather formulaic, at least for a first screen, so GPA and GRE/LSAT/GMAT etc. scores loom large. Grad school admissions is much more holistic. Usually the decisions are made by a faculty committee, so the process can be idiosyncratic from school to school, year to year within a school, but at the same time, much less formulaic and much more inclusive of all sorts of bits of data.</p>
<p>I know almost nothing about grad school admissions first-hand, but nmd, what you're describing seems to be similar to the processes that other current and former grad students have described to me, as well as what I've gleaned from other CC-like forums designed more for grad students.</p>
<p>It seems, for example, that there's a lot less emphasis on prestige of the school or GPA undergrad. For example there are schools that schools CC-ers tend to put at the bottom of the pile (a school like UCSD, for example) that would be deemed sufficiently prestigious by the other forum-goers. Where they get really one-uppy and nitpicky with each other is on things like statements of purpose, knowledge of the field, etc. The evaluative emphasis seems to be entirely redistributed, and very much in the favor of somebody who has had the U of C experience.</p>
<p>My friends who have applied to academic-based grad schools have done extraordinarily well--- the offers and the money have seemed to have floated down from heaven.</p>
<p>I live in the Yale community and I have a child who will be entering the third year at the U of Chicago. Last winter I was talking to the secretary of the Grad School at Yale and telling her that I had a child a the U of Chicago. She told me that Yale loves to take students at their grad schools from the U of Chicago, perhaps even more so that almost any other university. She was quite enthusiastic and went on to say that she felt that students from Chicago were among the best educated and well rounded students around. I told her that I was concerned about grade deflation at Chicago and that my child at the time had around a 3.6 cum . She indicated that she thought that that was phenomenal from Chicago and thatYale gave much more weight to a cum like that from Chicago than a much higher cum from many other institutions.</p>