<p>One of my teachers went to Cornell and his best friend went to Stanford and they both had the same major. Apparently the Stanford student did a lot less work and always got A's and B's. He's not a genius, its apparently "almost impossible" to get below a C in Stanford because of grade inflation and easy curves. Pretty weird huh?</p>
<p>Not weird at all. Harvard has a similar grading "curve."</p>
<p>It is also nearly impossible to get below a C at Cornell. Even in most science courses (curved to a B), you'd have to score 2 std. devs below the mean to get a D. My stats is a little rusty but, assuming a bell curve, that means you'd have to be in the bottom 1-2% to get a D. </p>
<p>Cornell's avg. GPA is in the 3.4 range, not far from Stanford.</p>
<p>It's definitely possible to get below a C at Cornell. If you don't put the required effort into studying for a class, you'll easily fail.</p>
<p>That is why people pay a lot of money for private school. The tour guy at Pomona also kept telling us how hard it is to get a C there.</p>
<p>An interesting fact (the first thing I thought of when Cornell and Stanford were mentioned) is that Stanford was founded by a Cornell grad. So the schools will likely be similar academically.</p>
<p>Um...I thought Leland Stanford being a Cornellian was only a myth?</p>
<p>cornell is sooo diverse (with all the diff colleges/schools) that comparing it to a smaller private like stanford is ridiculous...</p>
<p>i think that cornell is like no other, and yes you can get a D or C in classes, but that's usually if you fail every prelim...</p>
<p>there are some classes where its too easy to get a B...it all depends on the professor and what the rest of the class is doing...</p>