Is Brown highly grade inflated?

College Search & Selection
41

<p>hey sakky, </p>

<p>as a med student who recently went through the pre-med process, and someone who has split my time nearly 50-50 between MIT and Brown over the last six years, let me tell you it would be a shame if you chose not to go to MIT because you think their pre-meds do not do well.</p>

<p>it is not true that they "suffer from an unusually low pre-med placement rate relative to peer schools". you might be surprised to know that getting 82% of applying undergrads into med school, when the national average is 49%, is pretty much as high as it gets. brown's placement is only a couple percentage points higher.</p>

<p>plus, we are both speaking in generalities. native ability and drive has a lot more influence on getting into med school than where you go to school. (that being said, where you do undergrad can significantly influence WHERE you get into med school).</p>

<p>buy any book on getting into med school and it will tell you the same. a C in orgo at princeton is an average grade whereas a C in orgo at harvard is below average--med schools know this and do not view them as equivalent.</p>

<p>on that note, averages can be deceiving. look at the range of acceptances in that link you posted. i guarantee you that a 2.67 undergrad GPA would practically bar you from getting into med school if you went anywhere except MIT.</p>

42

<p>Everyone who I've ever asked has said that at Brown, it is hard to get a B, let alone only the brightest and best students get A's.
It should also be said that Brown, among other schools similar to it with its unique atmosphere and S/NC option, doesn't necessarily make its students pride themselves on their grades. I get the sense that no one necessarily will ask you... "So, what did Professor X give you?" and instead, the question will be more along the lines of, "what did you find interesting about Professor X and his/her course?" - Brown seems to be tailored more towards teaching its Undergrad students and making sure they learn, which is one HUGE reason why Brown is a lot less cut-throat than other schools. You come to Brown to learn for Grad school, not to simply get good grades for Grad school.</p>

43

<p>but brown doesn't give out +/- either. It goes by A B C D. Basically, at top tier places it is really hard to get the "A," and the A- isn't nearly as hard. At Brown, an A- student will have a 4.0</p>

44

<p>
[quote]
let me tell you it would be a shame if you chose not to go to MIT because you think their pre-meds do not do well.

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</p>

<p>Oh? Well, let me put it to you this way. It's not just me saying it. Perhaps you'd love to come to the MIT and Caltech sections of this discussion board where you will see that the consensus opinion even among the students themselves is that MIT and Caltech are bad places to go for premed. Heck, even molliebatmit and Ben Golub, who are the two de-facto spokespeople for MIT and Caltech respectively, have said so. Perhaps you'd like to convince them that they're wrong? </p>

<p>
[quote]
you might be surprised to know that getting 82% of applying undergrads into med school, when the national average is 49%, is pretty much as high as it gets. brown's placement is only a couple percentage points higher

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</p>

<p>First off, the 82% of is applying undergrads. It's 77% overall. Furthermore, it all has to be based on relative success rates. You hae to judge MIT in accordance with its peer schools, not just the national average. MIT premeds are looking longingly at the 90%+ success rates enjoyed by the premeds at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. </p>

<p>Hence, it is ABSOLUTELY TRUE that MIT has a low success rate compared to peer schools. I am not comparing MIT to the no-name schools out there because they are obviously not peer schools. You have to compare MIT to comparable schools, and then you have to ask why is it that MIT premeds don't enjoy the same kind of success that the premeds at those comparable schools do. </p>

<p>
[quote]
plus, we are both speaking in generalities. native ability and drive has a lot more influence on getting into med school than where you go to school. (that being said, where you do undergrad can significantly influence WHERE you get into med school).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Surely you're not implying that MIT and Caltech students do not have native ability and drive? </p>

<p>
[quote]
buy any book on getting into med school and it will tell you the same. a C in orgo at princeton is an average grade whereas a C in orgo at harvard is below average--med schools know this and do not view them as equivalent.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Yet you still have to ask the question of why is it that there seems to be little difference between the admitted GPA's of people who go to difficult schools vs. those who go to easy schools. You would think that if med-schools "know this" and care, they woul be compensating for this fact such that this would show up in the numbers. </p>

<p>I'll put it to you this way. MIT is known by practically everyone as a difficult school. Yet I see that MIT premeds who successfully get in have a GPA of 3.6/4. That's about the same as the national average. You would think that if the med-schools were truly compensating for difficulty, then they would be admitting many more MIT premeds with lower grades such that the average admitted premed would have a GPA of less than a 3.6/4. </p>

<p>
[quote]
on that note, averages can be deceiving. look at the range of acceptances in that link you posted. i guarantee you that a 2.67 undergrad GPA would practically bar you from getting into med school if you went anywhere except MIT.

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</p>

<p>Tell that to the guy who got a 3.61/4 from MIT and didn't get in anywhere. </p>

<p>Again, I would point out that the average accepted MIT premed had a GPA of 3.6/4. Why so high? Why not admit more MIT students with lower grades?</p>

45

<p>That's true, but I bet MIT grads with 3.6 go to way better med schools on average than students from other schools with 3.6. So basically, if you'd be a top student at MIT, it would be better to go to MIT. If you'd be average or below, it'd be better to go somewhere else...</p>

46

<p>sakky, i hate to pull rank but are you in high school? particularly if so, but really either way, you're awfully stubborn (and even a bit combative) for someone with limited experience and access to information.</p>

<p>i'm just trying to be helpful to you--i'm sure your views will evolve when (or if) you go through the process of being a pre-med.</p>

<p>first, so you know where i'm coming from...
-i've known many successful and unsuccessful applicants from MIT--some of whom are friends from undergrad (i lived there every other weekend for four years), some of whom i am studying with now in med school. similarly, i've known many successful and unsuccessful applicants from brown.</p>

<p>-i've served on a medical school admissions committee that evaluated applicants from MIT</p>

<p>-i've gone through the process recently--meaning been on the interview trail with students from many schools, read all the pre-med books out there, and been counseled by one of the most seasoned pre-med advisors out there</p>

<p>so here's how it is: if you want to go to med school, MIT will not hurt you more than Brown will help you. </p>

<p>no school boasts a rate above 90% that is real--many things go into this you will see for yourself, including actively weeding people out and effectively not letting them apply to keep this stat high.</p>

<p>GPA's are viewed in context for med school, and therefore the subject of apparent grade inflation is a nonissue. this also goes for grad school, jobs, and everything else.</p>

47

<p>
[quote]
sakky, i hate to pull rank but are you in high school? particularly if so, but really either way, you're awfully stubborn (and even a bit combative) for someone with limited experience and access to information.

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</p>

<p>Well, I'd hate to pull rank on YOU. You say that I have limited information and experience? Why don't you search through all of my many old posts, and you will find out how much I know and don't know. Then after that, why don't you come back and ask me about my biography again. </p>

<p>"Stubborn" and "combative". You better be careful, because what you just said is tantamout to an insult. I have no quarrel with getting you banned from this board. You claim to be older and wiser than me, yet you got personal, and I didn't. </p>

<p>
[quote]
no school boasts a rate above 90% that is real--many things go into this you will see for yourself, including actively weeding people out and effectively not letting them apply to keep this stat high.

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</p>

<p>Then perhaps you'd probably explain Princeton's roughly 92% rate as not being "real". </p>

<p><a href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/2005Statistics.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/2005Statistics.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Harvard's and Yale's admit data is similar. Unfortunately, it's not available online (you have to view it in hardcopy), but trust me, it's not substantially different from Princeton's.</p>

<p>You might try to explain this by saying that these schools actively "weed" through their tough premed classes. However, the same can be said of virtually every school. So that's not something that is particular to HYP. </p>

<p>
[quote]
GPA's are viewed in context for med school, and therefore the subject of apparent grade inflation is a nonissue. this also goes for grad school, jobs, and everything else.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Then please, by all means, come ot the MIT and Caltech sections of CC and convince everybody there of this. It would be awfully nice to explain why is it that MIT can, every year, only get about 75-80% of its premeds into med-school whereas HYP can get 90+%. That is, of course, unless you are going to take the position that MIT students are simply not as good as HYP students, which I'm sure would elicit quite a firestorm of protest. </p>

<p>The crux of the problem generally happens to be in the round 1 apps, or in pre-med parlance, getting "rejected pre-secondary". Many if not most med-schools run a largely numerical screen in their first round, and only if you survive that first round will that med-school then invite you to submit the secondary app, or the "real" application. But the point is, you gotta survive to get to the real application. Plenty of people don't even survive that first round.</p>

48

<p>"GPA's are viewed in context for med school, and therefore the subject of apparent grade inflation is a nonissue. this also goes for grad school, jobs, and everything else."
Validate that with statistics. Admissions officers at all levels say many things, all of which I'm skeptical of, as the process is opaque. Believe with certainty only what the statistics say and imply. All else is hearsay.</p>

49

<p>sakky,</p>

<p>you clearly have expended a lot of effort trying to learn about being pre-med, and i give you full credit for that. being proactive is likely to be a great asset once you graduate from high school (i can only assume). </p>

<p>here's how your post illustrates your limited experience and knowledge: just like MIT, princeton is an infamously grade DEFLATED school. so much so that they made national headlines last year for being the first and only school to put hard caps on the amount of A's awarded (this article specifically describes the difficulty of being pre-med at princeton: <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-01-22-princeton-grade-inflation_x.htm"&gt;http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-01-22-princeton-grade-inflation_x.htm&lt;/a> ). and yet...lo and behold, they seem to place folks into med school extremely well. </p>

<p>by your own logic, princeton students should be at a disadvantage. how do you suppose they are different from MIT?</p>

<p>also, just by extension of your logic, do engineers fare worst in the pre-med game than humanities majors? on average, engineers have lower GPA's. answer: they don't. in fact, they seem to have an edge.</p>

<p>sorry buddy.</p>

50

<p>
[quote]
being proactive is likely to be a great asset once you graduate from high school (i can only assume).

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Once again, asking personal questions? I don't presume to know anything about you, so keep in mind that you know nothing about me.</p>

<p>
[quote]
here's how your post illustrates your limited experience and knowledge: just like MIT, princeton is an infamously grade DEFLATED school. so much so that they made national headlines last year for being the first and only school to put hard caps on the amount of A's awarded (this article specifically describes the difficulty of being pre-med at princeton: <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/educat...inflation_x.htm)%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.usatoday.com/news/educat...inflation_x.htm)&lt;/a>. and yet...lo and behold, they seem to place folks into med school extremely well. </p>

<p>by your own logic, princeton students should be at a disadvantage. how do you suppose they are different from MIT

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</p>

<p>Wrong, wrong. Absolutely positively 100% wrong. The recent changes in Princeton's grading was because of Princeton's reputation for grade INFLATION not deflation. After all, why would you want to put a hard cap on the number of A's if you are already a grade deflated school? </p>

<p>Consider this.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/princeton.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.gradeinflation.com/princeton.html&lt;/a>
<a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com/brown.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.gradeinflation.com/brown.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The changes that Princeton enacted to its grading policy took effect only in the fall of 2004 and have nothing to do with Princeton grading before that. Actually, the fact that Princeton enacted this policy just recently MUST MEAN that Princeton grading in the past was inflated. And is is precisely that inflated grading that the 2005 Princeton premed grads or alumni enjoyed throughout most of their tenure at Princeton. The 2005 Princeton premeds endured at most 1 year under the new grading policy. And of course some of those premeds had graduated from previous years and therefore had enjoyed all of the old Princeton grade inflation of the past. </p>

<p>And in fact, take a look at the USA Today Article that you cited. It says:</p>

<p>"Under the guidelines, which go into effect in the fall for Princeton's 4,600 undergraduates, faculty are expected to restrict the number of A's to 35% in undergraduate courses. For junior and senior independent work, the percentage receiving A's will be capped at 55%. </p>

<p>A's have been awarded 46% of the time in recent years at Princeton, up from 31% in the mid-1970s. Since 1998, the New Jersey school has encouraged its faculty to crack down, but grades continued to rise. Finally, Princeton administrators decided that the only solution was to ration top grades. </p>

<p>At other Ivy League schools, the percentages of A grades in undergraduates courses ranges from 44% to 55%, according to Princeton's Web site. At Harvard University, 91% of seniors graduated with some kind of honors in 2001. </p>

<p>"The percentages stipulated would return our grading practices to the level we saw up until the early 1990s," Malkiel said. </p>

<p>The percentages mirror grading patterns at Princeton from 1987 to 1992."</p>

<p>Hence, what that means is that Princeton was in fact grade inflated in the recent past. Only as of fall of 2004 has the grading changed. Hence, the 2005 Princeton premed data shows the ADVANTAGE of grade inflation. Your article does not invalidate my argument, in fact it actually STENGTHENS my argument. </p>

<p>Again, just ask yourself, why would Princeton feel the need to institute hard caps on the number of A's it gives out if Princeton grading was not inflated in the past? </p>

<p>
[quote]
also, just by extension of your logic, do engineers fare worst in the pre-med game than humanities majors? on average, engineers have lower GPA's. answer: they don't. in fact, they seem to have an edge.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>No edge at all. If there was an edge, it ought to be reflected in the MIT data, whose students are predominantly engineers. Yet here's MIT getting only 77% of its premeds into med-school as compared to HYP getting over 90%. If engineers really had an advantage, then why are MIT premeds not doing as well as HYP premeds are?</p>

51

<p>I thought that Stanford clamped down on grade inflation about 5 years ago. There was a big article in the NY Times about it.</p>

52

<p>...and yet at princeton you require a lower science GPA to get accepted to med school than the national average. there's a difference between the curve in a pre-med class in 2005 and the overall average GPA in 2001 present in the link you cited.</p>

<p>meanwhile, the range of acceptances at MIT range from 2.67-4.0, and denials range from 2.69-3.61. there's no correlation w/ apparent inflation whatsoever.</p>

<p>if you go to a top undergrad school it improves your chances of getting into a top med school, but has minimal impact on your chances of getting into A med school.</p>

<p>pleasure, as always</p>

53

<p>
[quote]
and yet at princeton you require a lower science GPA to get accepted to med school than the national average. there's a difference between the curve in a pre-med class in 2005 and the overall average GPA in 2001 present in the link you cited.

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</p>

<p>I believe that can be simply attributed to the fact that Princeton students are likely to get higher MCAT scores than the national average. For the same reason, MIT premeds are also more likely to get into med-school than the national. High MCAT scores can cover for a lot. </p>

<p>Look at it this way. What's the average MCAT score for Princeton premeds? What about MIT premeds? Then compare it to the national average. It is then no wonder that Princeton and MIT premeds are more successful than the national average.</p>

<p>But the discussion is NOT ABOUT comparing to the national average. The discussion is about comparing to peer schools. It is of course true that MIT premeds do better than the national average. After all, they better do so because MIT students are far better than the average student in the country. The real question is, why don't MIT premeds do AS WELL as Princeton premeds? Or, by extension, Harvard or Yale premeds? Or, in this case, Brown premeds? </p>

<p>
[quote]
meanwhile, the range of acceptances at MIT range from 2.67-4.0, and denials range from 2.69-3.61. there's no correlation w/ apparent inflation whatsoever.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>The correlation is simple. If med-schools really were cognizant of the fact that MIT grading is difficult, then med-schools would be admitting more MIT students with low grades, such that the AVERAGE admitted premed would have a distinctively low GPA. After all, it would make perfect sense. I would say that somebody with a 3.0/4 from MIT is probably at least as good as somebody else with a 3.6/4 from the average school. Yet when it comes down to who gets admitted, the average admitted MIT premed has a 3.6, which is about the same as the admitted premed nationwide. THAT, my friend, is where the correlation lies.</p>

<p>Again, let me make it black and white. It has been asserted by some people that med-schools understand that certain schools are more difficult than others and will thus be more 'understanding' of premeds that come from those difficult schools. I think we can all agree that MIT is one of those difficult schools. Yet at the end of the day, look at the average GPA's of the MIT premeds who get admitted. It's about the same GPA as the national average of premeds who get admitted. Why is that? If med-schools were really so understanding of MIT's grading policies, then shouldn't that be reflected in the stats? Shouldn't med-schools be admitting MIT premeds with average grades that are LOWER than the national average? That's simple logic.</p>