Is it hard to get/maintain a 3.5 GPA?

Colleges and Universities A-Z University of Miami - Florida
1

<p>Hi current students</p>

<p>Is it hard to get or maintain a 3.5 GPA(or higher) in U of Miami (especially in the first year)?
Let's say for the School of Business Administration or the College of Arts & Sciences, because I got in the business school, but my math is horrible and I don't want to mess up my GPA. I'm planning on changing my major to either International Studies, Economics or Ecosystem Science & Policy.</p>

<p>Thank you for answering :)</p>

2

<p>3.5 is harder than I thought. I barely got that last semester after a lot of work.</p>

<p>In the business school it shouldn’t be terribly tough, but in Arts and Sciences it is difficult as there are more core requirements that are very varied with which you may or may not struggle.</p>

3

<p>does grade inflation exist here?</p>

4

<p>Grade inflation exists EVERYWHERE.</p>

<p>Though, at UM anyway, I think it depends on your department.</p>

<p>In Biology they usually weight the courses, so that the average is a C. In Chemistry, the average needs to be ~78 in all classes (according to my TA, anyway). Physics uses a similar system. Usually they do this by making really hard tests, then increasing grades, as opposed to making easy tests, then reducing grades. Which works better, I think, because then you’re likely to have greater differentiation among levels of understanding.</p>

<p><a href=“http://people.uleth.ca/~runte/inflation/image14.jpg[/url]”>http://people.uleth.ca/~runte/inflation/image14.jpg&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Edit: IMO, grade inflation is just a bunch of… well, I won’t use the phrase on this website. If you go to a school, like UM, which, on average, has students in the top 5-10% of their class, you would expect everyone to be getting A’s. It simply makes more sense. It doesn’t make sense for someone going to UM to get a 2.4GPA when, putting out the same amount of effort, they would have received a 4.0 at the Northern University of South East Florida, and then get admitted to medical school with that 4.0. If you have a school with admission SAT scores and GPAs that are increasing on average, one would, correspondingly, expect that the GPA of students at that school would increase. So I don’t think it should be called grade inflation, because that implies people are getting grades they don’t deserve. Rather, “intermural grade equalization” seems to be a proper way to put it in many cases.</p>

5

<p>The science classes are curved so that a majority get at least a C but few get Bs and even fewer get As.</p>