<p>
</p>
<p>What leads you to draw such a conclusion?</p>
<p>If anything, due to the sink-or-swim competitiveness of undergraduate existence at a large state school and the unavailability of concerned professors for anytime one-on-one consultation, one would have to work harder and to the best of one’s ability to remain at the very forefront of the pack.</p>
<p>I compared the material covered and difficulty of test questions from my courses and similar ones my friends have taken at a bunch of different state schools in subjects like math, chemistry, economics, and business. Most of these are at the intro and intermediate level though because I have only completed sophomore year. State schools might have atmospheres that make it tougher to succeed. HOwever, that doesn’t make the material tougher. The tippy top state schools like Berkeley and Michigan are probably comperable in the sciences, but most state schools, even top ones, aren’t as difficult material wise than Ivies.</p>
<p>
Thats a really low opinion of state school professors. I’m sure most, if not all, have office hours and make themselves available to students who seek the help.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes, but the big difference is in the curve. Berkeley only gives out 15% As in the premed courses, for example, whereas the Ivies are typically curved to an A-/B+. Berkeley (and the Cal States) give out a LOT of D’s and F’s whereas that just doesn’t happen in the Ancient Eight. Stanford even got rid of F’s.</p>
<p>At Penn, not sure about the others though I think it’s similar at Cornell, premed courses are curved to C+/B-, not A-/B+. As are also given out to about the top 25%. While thats still more As and not as tough curve wise as Cal, it still doesn’t make my premed courses any easier. Being in the top 25% of an Ivy course is probably just as hard to do as being in the top 15% of a Cal course in terms of competition. While the bottom isn’t as bad at Ivies (I don’t think many, if any, kids get Fs though there are probably a fair number of Ds and lots of Cs) getting a top score isn’t significantly easier. I am fairly confident that most students at Ivies would be in the top half of the curve at most UCs and Cal States and not in danger of the D and F grades in the same way that if a student getting a D in intro Chem at UCSD or Cal State would probably struggle for a C at Penn or Cornell.</p>
<p>To put an end to this whole grade inflation debate, just post the latin honor cut off GPA.</p>
<p>The cut off GPA at NYU</p>
<p>Summa cum laude (top 5% of graduating class) 3.893
Magna cum ladue (top %15) 3.786
cum laude (top 35%) 3.650</p>
<p>So you sort of get a rough feel for how frequently (or infrequently) As are given out.</p>
<p>The source for above is</p>
<p><a href=“Class Registration, Transcripts, Graduation”>Class Registration, Transcripts, Graduation;
<p>Hm. This is actually a very good idea. This could easily make an excellent source of data for grade inflation across the entire university, instead of just among the students who eventually apply to law school.</p>
<p>(is intrigued)</p>
<p>the problem with skgirl’s idea is:</p>
<p>1) not all colleges offer such honors (Berkeley does not);
2) not sure if that is a standard (5%, 15%, 35%)
3) By focusing on graduating seniors, it ignores all those that flunk out, which at the Ivies is likely <0.1%; thus, those Frosh D’s and F’s just disappear bcos the students have disappeared.
4) By focusing on graduating seniors, it includes transfers (which public schools and Cornell) have a lot of; plus. upper division courses tend to have higher grade distributions.
5) Finally, I think it ignores what you were trying to accomplish, bdmike. To take an example, let’s say that at the mean LSAT of NYU was a 160, but yet a 3.65 earns honors. How do you compare that to a college with a mean of 16x but a 3.5 cum laude cutoff?</p>
<p>So here’s what I’d propose.</p>
<p>1.) Obtain these cutoffs, whatever they are, for as many schools as possible.
2.) Obtain incoming freshman SAT scores, whatever they are, for as many schools as possible.
3.) Plot both SAT scores and outgoing GPAs onto a bell curve, again as best as possible. Figure out what SAT score correlates with what GPA, etc.</p>
<p>I agree that failure rates (which can be added to the data) and transfers (which probably can’t be subtracted) will pose a problem. The different rates are okay, though, since we can adjust accordingly.</p>
<p>In other words, it’s not that a 160 correlates to a 3.65. It’s that incoming students average (say) a 1250 and 30% of them will eventually get a 3.5.</p>
<p>umm, not quite. </p>
<p>If the incoming Frosh average 1250, and the bottom ~20% drop out, the remaining 80% may now have an average of 1300+. And of those remaining 80%, 30% obtain a 3.5 honors…</p>
<p>Graduation rates are, I believe, posted in US News. So the incoming freshmen average a 1250 and 0.8*0.3 = 0.24 of them get a 3.5 GPA. That can give us a (very rough, obviously) bell curve for each of SAT and GPA.</p>
<p>Requirements for Latin Honors at Different schools:
<a href=“http://www.cofc.edu/~senate/docs111307/FCAS111307c.pdf[/url]”>http://www.cofc.edu/~senate/docs111307/FCAS111307c.pdf</a></p>
<p>Hrm. This document doesn’t give us the percentages, thus making the method vulnerable to BB’s critique. Maybe at some point I’ll try an example with a couple schools (Duke and Williams?) to see if this method works at all.</p>