<p>I noticed that in high school prolly 25+ percent of kids have 4.0+ GPAs. And then in college everyone is getting 3.0s and 3.5s. Is college really that hard? If not what accounts for the sharp drop in GPA? Is is hard to get a 3.9+ in college (for med school) ???</p>
<p>thanks in advance</p>
<p>depends what college. depends on your professors. in college you aren't baby fed info like in HS and its harder because the level of edu isn't meant to accomodate everyone like in HS. i don't think it ridiculously hard to get a 3.9, but it's not easy. </p>
<p>the drop in GPA is probably b/c students have more to procrastinate with and lose focus and the classes are harder and many time grades aren't 100% black and white...meaning profs or TA's may make grades dependent on a lot of factors.</p>
<p>Well, the 4.0+ thing obviously isn't going to happen in college because it's a different scale. </p>
<p>And I think the difficulty of college depends entirely on the school and the major you're dealing with.</p>
<p>^yeah that too. and extracurriculars you have, and partying...i mean....</p>
<p>i know a guy with a 4.0...he is a sevant. I dont find getting a 3.8+ extremely difficult, though you do have to work for it.</p>
<p>no, everybody suddenly becomes dumber after entering college.</p>
<p>lulz.</p>
<p>oh, hobo.</p>
<p>If 25% of the students in your HS have a 4.0, then your school has MAJOR grade inflation</p>
<p>Well, most high schools weight grades according to some system, allowing a GPA over 4.0. In college, it's impossible to get over a 4.0 -- everything's weighted euqally.</p>
<p>Anyway, I agree with Drew's comment, that's insane.</p>
<p>nope, not my school
we have 650 students and 5 students includin me have uw 4.0</p>
<p>25% is rough estimate from what i see on CC</p>
<p>at my college, however, 3.8+ are rather rare</p>
<p>Well people on CC aren't exactly representative of an average highschool population. I mean, the people on here sometimes make me feel like my 98.5 (out of 100) is below average! :) If you have a 4.0 or better in highschool, you are probably fairly well prepared for college unless your school has extreme grade inflation or you take really easy classes.</p>
<p>Really depends on how your classes are graded. I have a whole bunch of design classes that are graded subjectively, so basically they take the top x students in the class and give them As, and then give the people that did good but not the absolute best Bs, and give the people that put minimal effort into it Cs. So it'd be pretty much impossible to get a 4.0 because you're just not going to be the best at every single thing, in every single class, over and over. And a lot of it is not necessarily what you did, but what the other people in the class ended up doing...you could do the same exact thing in 2 classes, and in one class be one of the best, and in the other be one of the worst, depending on the other people.</p>
<p>Then there are what I call add-up-the-points classes. So say you have a class with 2 exams and 2 papers, and each one is worth a total of 100 points...you just add up your scores and if you get over 360 you get an A. Theoretically everyone in these classes can get an A because it's not subjective, it's just adding points.</p>
<p>I found college to be way easier than high school. I don't study the half time i studied in high school and i have much better GPA.</p>
<p>Some high schools are really good at preparing kids for university and so they think college is easier when they finally get there. If you go to many of the top schools, you will face getting a GPA lower than what you got in high school. At my school (U Michigan), seeing people with 3.8+ is rare (under 5%).</p>
<p>my hs was really good at pretty much destroying everyone's grades to the point where everyone studied (not joking) 5 hours for a calc test...it ended up that about 35% of our class got >4.0weighted (maybe about 5% got 4.0 unweighted, I'm guessing). now these same people went on to take multivariable calc at Berkeley or UCSD and ended up getting A's and calling it a piece of cake. They didn't even attend a lot of lectures. They had 4.4 weighted in HS, now they have 3.9 at UCSD, and I don't know what their unweighted was in HS. An educated guess would probably be 3.95 or so...</p>
<p>So maybe we have grade inflation. I'm not sure if that's true, but considering how our neighborhood is full of high-achieving Asians and whites, and the fact that the teachers aren't grading on a bell curve, then I'm not so sure about grade inflation. Everyone is crazy competitive (to the point where sometimes they won't show you their worked-out psets for chem sometimes, saying they left it at home) and their work ethic really shows in their grades.</p>
<p>Can't say that about every high school if they can produce the same results at top colleges.</p>
<p>like yah man.
the only thing that's bound to go down on you in college is your GPA.</p>
<p>MatthewM04 </p>
<p>one of the schools on my list is UMich and I am instate..but I have always got the impression that getting good grades at michigan is easy... I live in Michigan and from the student from my school that goes to michigan, it seems to me that michigan doesn't really have an extremely good student body. Most of the top 10% students from my school goes out of state to top 20 schools and the rest goes to UMich...</p>
<p>A lot of freshmen come in and think it's easy -- and then they get a 2.5 GPA and aren't laughing so much. While depending on your school (I keep saying this because it is key), the top x% of your school may go to HYPS and such, but to think that U-M is an easy school, or even an easy-to-get-into school (even for in-staters, so many of them were shocked they didn't get in this year after the all-time low acceptance rate, just check the boards if you want to see for yourself) is just simply not understanding the reality of the situation.</p>