My daughter want to ED Barnard for a Pre Med track. It is close to home, small class size and easy access to research facility. We are worried how challenge is the Pre Med course. Is there grade deflation or inflation?
thanks
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Calling @DigitalDad.
My daughter didn’t observe grade inflation herself or among her peers. Given that most Barnard and CC students would have come from the top 10% per of their high school classes - I can safely state that 90% of Columbia University undergraduate students were not within the top 10% of their respective college. 
And, of course, there will be a mix of students from all four undergraduate colleges in many classes - naturally, all are held to the same grading.
As far as grade deflation, I’m afraid I cannot speak specifically about courses from the Pre Med track - hopefully someone else will have first-hand experience.
If a general perspective helps, with my daughter’s courses towards one major and two minors (three different departments), plus the distribution requirements she had to satisfy (such as math, computer science, etc.) she was able to maintain an overall college GPA and major-related GPA, that was consistent with her GPA based on straight-A grades she had received throughout (well-funded, public) high school, incl. 5’s for all her AP scores (incl. Biology, Calc AB).
Now - to be fair, she had good time management and study habits during high school, working conscientiously on assignments, and prepared for exams, (way too) often burning midnight oil. She carried over that work ethic through college; during conversations mentioning how (manageably) busy she felt, what papers she might still have to work on during the weekend, yet… was always able to balance that with fun nights out with friends, club activities, or just dropping in some museum for an interesting exhibit – and no longer burning midnight oil.
Most importantly, she made a point of taking advantage of office hours. With that personal connection to professors, she found faculty to be engaged, supportive and open to the occasional reasonable requests. Likewise, in courses that didn’t come particularly easy to her, there were fellow students who would lend a hand. It didn’t seem to matter if particular classes happened to be conducted at Columbia that semester, or at Barnard.
Apparently, the course work at Barnard had her well prepared, as she didn’t need to take additional courses prior to being accepted into a small, competitive graduate program, and now as a 2nd year doctoral candidate, her academic results are no different than those who had already spent a few years in the field before being accepted.
To get a sense from what range of different majors/departments the roughly top 2% of Barnard students came - here their latest junior ΦΒΚ list:
and for the top 8%, the senior list:
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As a general comment, pre-med will be extremely challenging at any school. If your D loves Barnard, gets accepted, and it is affordable then it sounds like a great option.
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