Hi everybody! I got accepted to Wellesley and would just like some quick questions answered.
As of now, I’m planning on getting a job after undergrad (studying CS + English here) as a programmer, but I might want to pursue patent law later down the road. Would grade deflation (or rather, grade un-inflation as some refer it as) be an issue?
I do come from a very competitive, high-performing high school on the West Coast; hopefully the workload is something I can get used to. I’m more worried about the stories (even on previous CC posts) of unfair grading by professors and/or inexplicable lower grades than teammates, etc.
It’s major-dependent. In the economics department you’ll definitely feel the effects of grade deflation, but CS is the opposite – I had a classmate straight-up tell me that she thought the department handed out A’s rather freely. Don’t have any experience with English, though.
ACK! I’ve posted about this before and will again, I’m sure. There is no grade deflation, as in your A is turned into a B. There is just less grade inflation than there is at some other schools, but this does not hurt Wellesley grads in elite grad school admissions. Why? Grad schools know about W’s policy of not over-inflating grades, and they know that Wellesley grads are well-prepared for graduate study.
Every single year, Wellesley sends its graduates to the top graduate programs in the country. They wouldn’t be able to do this if their grading policy somehow damaged students’ chances. So don’t worry! You won’t be cheated out of the grades you deserve.
I know one of the professors who worked on the study of grading. In the past, it was true that certain majors, such as Economics, were graded more difficultly. This is part of the reason for the policy - the school looked across departments to make the grading more even so students wouldn’t be picking courses or majors based on the ease of getting an A, but on what they were interested in. So it should no longer be true that it is a department by department thing. Of course, individuals skills vary, so it may be much easier for student X to get an A in English than student B because that is where their skills lie.
I’d agree that Wellesley doesn’t hand out As, but it isn’t impossible to do well and have a high GPA for law school admissions. Many Wellesley women go on to attend Yale, Harvard, Stanford, Columbia, etc. law schools
