<p>My father attended a private school in the south for some time before transferring, and he did little work to recieve his As. I suppose it was a good way for him to earn a high GPA so he could get out and attend a school more prestigious and where he had to work a little more for those As.</p>
<p>I guess the question that remains is how is Chicago's tough - and in my opinion correct- grading policy dealt with in terms of graduate admissions. Though not my particular case, I know that quite a few incoming students are somehwat concerned about that since they are eyeing medical and law schools down the road and their GPA is therefore very important. Do graduate schools take Chicagos grading policy into account, or is a 3.5 gpa at chicago just as good as a 3.5gpa at any other school?</p>
<p>Law school is probably less forgiving than grad school in most other disciplines, with regards to GPA.</p>
<p>samwise, the big state schools that one would compare to Chicago have little, if any, grade inflation. Take Berkeley, for example.</p>
<p>I can't speak for Berkeley, but I can speak for Michigan. Grades, especially in the honors program, are extremely inflated (not that I'm complaining ;)).</p>
<p>Of course they would be in an honors program. And of course they would be in something like anthropology or sociology. But real subjects? Physics, math, electrical engineering? I think not.</p>
<p>It's not so much that grades are inflated at big state universities. Rather, the idea is that a Chicago student would probably easily get a top grade, because they'd be at the top of the curve, even in physics, math, and engineering. If they were at the bottom of the curve, they probably wouldn't have gotten into Chicago.</p>
<p>^point well made^</p>
<p>I'm not so sure that you can reasonably assume that.</p>
<p>Why not? Please explain.</p>
<p>Because the top publics can have some very grade deflated classes and programs in addition to very good students. More specifically, I'm thinking of science and engineering classes at Berkeley.</p>
<p>"But real subjects? Physics, math, electrical engineering? I think not."</p>
<p>Funny you mention that, because I am majoring in physics and math.</p>
<p>Oh really? I was going to do that combo but now I'm doing math/economics.</p>
<p>(1) Berkeley isn't like most big state schools. The original poster (Daniel Vojtash) put Berkeley and Michigan in different brackets. He very clearly wrote, "with few exceptions", and you seem to have missed that.</p>
<p>(2) Almost all public schools will have some brilliant students. All sorts of factors can draw intelligent people to big state schools. However, in general, these remarkably intelligent people will have an easier time getting top grades at the big state schools because they are more the exception than the rule at the big state schools. Yes, I admit that the average GPA will be lower at the big state school, but the purpose of that is to weed people out. They wouldn't have been more successful at Chicago. On the other hand, the people that got top grades at the state school will find themselves competing with a more consistently competitive peer group at Chicago, and not everybody is going to be getting an A. I recommend that you read this lovely little chapter that Richard Feynman wrote for his students in the bottom 25% at Cal Tech. He did a good job explaining how the system worked there, and in principal, it's the same at most elite private schools.</p>
<p>As one of those students who gets a ~3.5 in Engineering at a big state school I do think it's quite unreasonable to assume that state schools are grade inflated. A more telling statistic is the graduating percentage of those in certain programs. My program has a 55% graduation rate, as compared with 71% for engineering colleges in the nation. Using that metric it is hard to reason that my school is grade inflating - under any meaning of the word. Average at worst, most likely grade deflating.</p>
<p>As is true for private schools, there is variation in grading between departments as well as between state schools. Most state universities have a different mission than do privates and typically provide more variation in what is required for a degree. This makes direct comparisons difficult. Having attended both public and private, I have met gifted people at both, and perhaps the most challenging class I had was in fact at a community college. The main difference between public & private is the variation in academic skills within the student body. Even schools like Michigan and UCB experience that to some extent. However, given the size of these schools, the absolute number of top students is probably greater at these schools than at many or most privates. Even at lessor known state universities the absolute number (as opposed to percentage) of top students can be quite large. Some programs, such as engineering, attract more of these students than may other programs. Accordingly, the ease with which one can get an A may indeed be quite different between departments. In summary, if I had to guess, though there is variation in student academic skills at privates, it probably is not as great as in seen at most publics, and, accordingly, there are more programs at the publics that respond to that variation, which may account for the difference on perception concerning grading.</p>