Intellectual curiousity-what schools have a majority of students with it and why?

Parents Forum
121

<p>Well, whomever wins, the difference was made by "Mickey Mouse" (78 votes).</p>

122

<p>A corollary to Coureur's differentiation of students who are "intellectual" and those who are not...</p>

<p>The student who selects a given college BECAUSE it has grade inflation would certainly be considered on one end of the spectrum...</p>

<p>I have certainly seen kid posts where this was the case...</p>

123

<p>My take on grade inflation....I'm not so sure H marks on a curve. All the kids are bright, so why pit one against the other? To my mind if you can master a foreign language like Japanese never having been immersed in it except for one brief summer in Japan, I think you deserve an "A." And to be able to read, understand, and then remember centuries of Sho-guns in Japanese and be able to write about it knowledgeably in Kanji after one semester..I think that perhaps deserves somewhat close to an "A," don't you think? Nah.....I just think we members of the intellectual mediocrity somehow don't quite think these kids deserve what they have worked for. I know I couldn't do it..even if I was immersed for a decade in Japan and I am his mother. His grades were right on target. For what he worked for, he got his "A." For the slacker classes that he should have aced, he didn't. And then there was JFK...merely a "C' student in his "government" concentration. And..he should have been one of those "entitled" to his "A" by your beliefs. Nah.....let the statisticians write what they may...give me the link....I can tell you first hand..and my S took classes in many depts. He really did try everything. He only got the "A" grade in what he worked hardest for. Don't agree with you at all. My S said H had some of the most difficult coursework imagineable. But he was happy to be there.</p>

124

<p>Here's a comment on grading in a letter to the Faculty by then Harvard Dean of Faculty, Jeremy R. Knowles: </p>

<p>Grade Inflation. </p>

<p>Last spring, the Educational Policy Committee reviewed the patterns of grades across the College, and concluded "that grade inflation has become a serious problem . . . and that steps should be taken to combat it." In particular, the committee recognized that with a narrowing range of effective grades (that is, grade compression), members of the faculty find it difficult clearly to signal the difference between work of different quality. The committee worried that having only a small differential between superior and routine work makes it impossible to inform students about the quality of their performance or to motivate them to do their best work. Data on the grades awarded to undergraduates in recent years have now been shared with the Faculty, and departments have been asked to develop definitions and standards for the quality of work that merits a particular grade.</p>

125

<p>Well, there you go! This must be a recent problem....my S went to H in 1994. And his superior work was in Japanese language and literature and did stand head over heels over many of the other kids who took classes with him. So yes, he did deserve his "A" then. But now? I'm not sure what might be going on. I will have to investigate further.
But thank you for the reference. I will check with my S re: the Knowles advice to his staff. He follow Harvard closely and lives in Cambridge area.</p>

126

<p>The difference between average GPA at Harvard and Swarthmore is 0.14 (big deal!), and grades have risen at almost exactly the same rate over the past 15 years (ending in 2001). And, since 1973-1974, there has been 30% more grade inflation at Swarthmore than at Princeton.</p>

127

<p>Ah, but the devil is in the details. Remember that the Honors program at Swarthmore is not based on grades, but on examination by an outside panel of academics in the field. In fact, Honors students at Swarthmore didn't even receive grades until 1996.</p>

<p>So, the statistics in the report you cite shows a 1970's baseline average GPA of 2.83 at Swarthmore (a "B"). But, that does not include the top 30% of students at the time.</p>

<p>Since 1996, students in the honors program at Swat have been given letter grades. The current average is 3.24. Hard to say whether or not there's much difference between 3.24 for 100% of the students and the previous 2.83 for the bottom 60% of the students.</p>

<p>Also, keep in mind that the "average GPA for an academic year" does not include first semester freshman grades (one eighth of the student/courses in a year).</p>

<p>I didn't look at every college on the list, but in looking at a couple dozen, it appears that Swarthmore (3.24) and Harvey Mudd (3.28) have the lowest average GPAs among elite colleges and universities.</p>

128

<p>The devil is in the details at ALL the schools. Each school has special programs, special majors (things like "directed studies" at Yale). The 3.24 since 1996 compares to 3.38 at Harvard. And since students in their first terms at most colleges have their roughest time, it's just another way for Swarthmore to "inflate" grades. It's just not statistically meaningful. Either you are arguing that there has been meaningful grade inflation at Swarthmore over the past 30 years, or alternatively, there wasn't much room to inflate to begin with.</p>

<p>It's just another one of those myths that students, overly concerned about grades and used to having all As in high school, like to believe about themselves.</p>

129

<p>Another possibility is that the students are in fact better. When I was at Williams back in the dark ages, I thought distinctly that the students in my high school (stuy) were both smarter and more competitive. (What I doubt they were was "better prepared" than the Exeter kids.) I have no idea whether this is true today, but I wouldn't ignore the possibility that Williams students are just smarter than they used to be.</p>

<p>And I think that might be even more true at Swarthmore. I don't know about 70s, but in the late 50s and 60s, Swarthmore was much more like Earlham is today than like what it is now. Much, much more student activism, much less intellectual pretension. (Doesn't necessarily mean that the students weren't as smart, only that they held to it as less a part of the core identities.) And I expect that is definitely true at Harvard. Now co-ed (in its day, I remember Radcliffe students being thought of as intellectually superior to Harvardians), larger admitted classes, and I would bet that "old money legacies" make up a much smaller proportion of Harvard's class today than it did 40 years ago. Maybe they just ARE smarter.</p>

130

<p>Mini -</p>

<p>I'm not sure I understand the value of the Entitlement Index statistic in and of itself. If its main value is that it predicts retention rates with good accuracy, the simpler and more direct approach would be to measure retention rates. Then you would have perfect accuracy instead of an approximation.</p>

<p>Does this statistic tell us something more that I am missing?</p>

131

<br>


<br>

<p>Exactly. And, despite that built-in "inflation", it still has the lowest average GPA of any elite college on the list.</p>

<p>I don't honestly know if there has been grade inflation at Swarthmore since the 1970s. Because the top third of the school was not graded before 1996, it's hard to tell because there's no direct apples to apples comparison. My guess is that there has been some, prompted more by a boost of the lowest grades rather than at the top. </p>

<p>The bigger issue at Harvard was the fact that 91% of the students were graduating with "Honors". I believe the adminstration recently installed a quota, capping "Honors" at 60% of the graduating seniors.</p>

<p>Princeton recented enacted a quota, capping the number of "A" grades given.</p>

<p>My brother, the college professor, attributes grade inflation, in part, to the increasing use of "student satisfaction surveys" in the tenure process. College students tend to rate professors who give them As higher than those who give them C's!</p>

132

<p>The concept here is to compare retention rates with the family financial status of those being retained, regardless of either the quality of the students or "institutional quality". One could do it "intra-institution" by comparing retention rates of "rich" students compared with "poor" ones. Or across institutions. Generally speaking, it is likely that, all other things being equal, schools with higher entitlement indices will have higher rates of retention. (Read it simplistically as fewer students will need to go home to take care of sick mom and four kids.)</p>

<p>By itself, the entitlement index serves as an indicator (and only one of many) of: a college's commitment to middle income and low income students; the economic diversity that exists on the campus, and its possible impacts on academic quality; the habits, attittudes, purchasing patterns, and life assumptions of the student body taken as a whole and, likely, their parents as well. The Pell Grant percentage, by itself, is a direct "hard" indicator of a college's commitment to low-income (bottom 35% of the population economically). It may be a secondary indicator of recruiting practices, or admissions department attitudes, or institutional thinking.</p>

<p>ID - so even with all those "issues" at Harvard, average GPAs are only 0.14 higher than at Swat. Sounds to me like Swat has issues they don't want to talk about.</p>

<p>"Exactly. And, despite that built-in "inflation", it still has the lowest average GPA of any elite college on the list."</p>

<p>I would have thought of it as a simple "rate adjustment".</p>

133

<p>Mini:</p>

<p>I'm not sure that an 8% difference in average GPA is as insignificant as you suggest.</p>

<p>The biggest grade related "issue" at Swarthmore is talked about quite a bit: whether or not the low average GPA hurts Swarthmore grads in career placements.</p>

<p>Another is the decline over the last 25 years in the percentage of students majoring in traditionally difficult hard science departments: Chemistry, Physics, and Engineering. By the same token, the fact that Swarthmore has an Engineering department (and it's hard as nails, by all accounts) may actually contribute to the low average GPA!</p>

<br>


<br>

<p>That's an interesting question. Swat's 4-year graduation rate has increased significantly over the last 30 years -- from 73% for the Class of 1975 to 86% for last year's class. Yet, I would be surprised if the percentage of high-income students has increased over that time frame. Freshman admissions in 1971 took place in a climate where "diversity" as a desireable goal was in its infancy.</p>

<p>I suspect that this trend is pretty universal among elite colleges.</p>

134

<p>Oh, I have no idea what happens with institutional retention rates over time! (we had lots of folks in Billsville who dropped out just as soon as they knew they had high draft numbers.) Similarly, I have no entitlement data over time. I think the only possible use of the data is comparing the "pre-culture" (culture based on family externalities) of one school to another. </p>

<p>If Swat wanted to inflate grades still further than they alreaday seem to have, they could eliminate all grades for the entire first year (and increase the "rate adjustment". Sounds like a bunch of bellyaching students not used to getting less than As to me. I'm sure Swat is advertising that its career placements are poor (LOL!) (relative to the competition.)</p>

135

<br>


<br>

<p>Wow, that's a powerful tool. Do you have reference for the scholarly statistical journal in which the validation of all these claims were published? I'm alway looking to learn more about statistics, and I'd like to read up on this one.</p>

136

<p>Mentioned incidentally in several posts: at virtually every college, there is less grade inflation in science, math, and engineering classes than in humanities and social sciences.
Therefore, does the percentage of humanities vs science and math majors impact which schools have the most grade inflation?
Is another measure of a student body's intellectual curiosity vs pre-professionalism how many students risk the majors that do not have inflated grades, especially since they may expect A's in humanities and social science classes with less effort, not to mention honors at graduation?</p>

137

<br>


<br>

<p>Yes. I'm sure that has an impact. I believe that the tech schools tend to have lower average GPAs. For example, Harvey Mudd has the lowest average GPA of the Claremont Colleges, despite having slightly higher incoming freshmen "stats" than Pomona.</p>

<p>One of the reasons is that exams in these subjects tend to be graded more objectively -- answers, in many cases, are either right or wrong. It's somewhat different when grading an essay.</p>