Hey. I know public schools in general have a harsh grading system, but how hard is it to receive an A in any upper division classes in L&S in comparison to STEM majors?
If you work hard, you’ll get an “A”.
Most stem classes in the weeder and lower div levels are capped at 20-30% As and A-s max. Upper divs will vary but in general the curve is set to a B/B-. @Muad_dib Lots of students work hard and get Cs and below. Most of the students at Ucla were near the top of their class so it’s only natural not everyone will get an A. Professors here stick to a bell curve.
Most large big name public schools grade on a bell curve to weed out students, especially when it takes an A average to get into these schools. At a University of Washington orientation, the Dean of admissions said that most admitted students were A students in high school and not every one can be doctors or lawyers. Therefore, there is a bell curve to weed out students. The same with the other lower tiers UC’s such as UCD, UCI, etc. Maybe the competition to achieve good grades at the lower UC’s is easier than UCLA or UCB.
Omg…okay… So maybe I should transfer to NYU or USC. I actually want to go to law school.
Generally going to the school you can get the highest gpa is ideal. Prestige has no bearing on law school admissions. All they care about is gpa and lsat scores
@10s4life interesting… I’ve heard of students intentionally picking “less prestige” schools cuz they knew it was going to be easier to maintain a high GPA… but I always thought they sacrificed something. I figured grad schools will take into account the extreme competitiveness of Cal, UCLA, etc.
@ericbadmon Unfortunately they don’t because there are enough top students from Ucla and cal that get those 4.0s.
@10s4life But isn’t there SOMETHING to gain out of going to a prestigious university? So for example, let’s say student A and B are competing for a spot at X law school. Student A went to Cal with a 3.7 GPA, Student B went to ASU with a 3.9. Both have similar test scores. Is student B, the one who went to ASU, really a better candidate than the student that went to Cal? Granted no one achieves a 4.0… but there are students who graduate with GPAs close to it
@ericbadmon No that prestige only matters to some employers. For law and med school it is very negligible. The quality of undergrad classes tbh is pretty much the same across most schools. I found classes I took over summer much harder than the ones I took at Ucla. And UC davis is outside the top 40 and Ucla is 21.
If your post-college goals are law school, then going somewhere you can get the best possible GPA is key. But what if you don’t go to law school? Then you’re stuck with a no-name degree. So you kinda need to hedge a little bit.
If you sacrificed a chance to go to UCLA so you can go to Southwestern Middle Central State University, and then you end up not going to law school, then you’re going to have a degree that might not open many doors to you on the job market.
For grad schools, a lot of admissions do take account the name of the school. I mean, it won’t make a significant difference, but there is a “conversion scale” that helps evaluate and compare GPA’s between schools. 
@ucla2021 yeah that’s what I thought
Which major has a better gpa when they graduate? Linguistics or Asian Studies?