<p>If that's the case, then Reed, Chicago and Cornell are probably the three best schools in the nation. Getting a 3.6 there is no easy feat, certainly tougher than at HYP or Dartmouth.
I always believed gpa was only a portion of what potential employers or grad school committees looked at, with references, internships and extracurriculars also weighing in.</p>
<p>It doesn't mean they're better, OR worse, if you have been at all following this debate. It just means that many grad schools and employers are aware that a student earning a 3.4 at UChicago is like a student earning a 3.5-3.6 (arbitrary number), say, at Dartmouth. And Cornell is not grade deflated outside of their engineering school. Their liberal arts and sciences school actually has a very high GPA. I believe mini posted that study somewhere. And Reed, well Reed's average GPA is low, but then their average student caliber is also lower than UChicago's, so 3.5 from Reed might be like a 3.3 from Chicago, for instance (again, just arbitrary numbers I picked to illustrate a point)</p>
<p>Grad schools look at specific course loads take, especially during the junior and senior years</p>
<p>this is getting nitty gritty lol</p>
<p>The one thing that will seperate out who is "smarter", is standardized tests scores. For example, if I have a Dartmouth student with 3.6 GPA and 27 MCAT, and I also have a student with 3.8 GPA and MCAT of 36 from Bowdion, there is NO WAY that the admissions officer will take the Dartmouth student because their standardized test score doesn't doesn't reflect their GPA. Every grad school sets a standard level, and if you don't meet it your out. At that point, name is null and void.</p>
<p>Escape, Chicago has experienced the highest rate of GRADE INFLATION of any school besides 1 or 2 in the last 10 years. In 1999, the average grade was like a 2.29. Go look at Mini's data, you will see that cornell in that same time period was a 2.25. All of this nonsense, that the engineering courses are only deflated is complete garbage as you can look at the median grades in all of the courses. Chicago and Cornell alike have experienced grade inflation and Chicago has a higher median GPA than Cornell if the rate of grade inflation continued up until 2004.</p>
<p>I think you are all overlooking the huge factor of personality when it comes to getting jobs (not grad school, but jobs). Sure HYP et al will have the top students who studied hardest in high school. But lots of students at schools a notch down are not necessarily "less smart", they just didn't spend as much time studying in high school. Some of these peole developed terrific social skills which are absolutely key in most businesses. So once you get the interview, the bright and charming Middlebury student may well have a better chance at getting the job than an introverted less socially adept Harvard student (not to say that Harvard students are less socially adept). But the difference between going to Harvard or Middlebury may come down to one got an A in AP French and one didn't, but one course, or one SAT2 that might make or break a college admission doesn't guarantee success in the real world.</p>
<p>bball, the rate of grade inflation means little. It's the current average GPA that will affect you. The average GPA in biology (and I think all the sciences) is like 3.1 at UChi. I don't know what it is at Cornell.</p>
<p>Other people: I feel that for law, medical, and business school, undergraduate makes less difference than for grad school. For grad school exactly what you studied in undergrad is very important, because grad school is like a continuation onto undergrad, whereas law and med schools essentially start from scratch after undergrad. Also I feel a given student could probably have comparable GRE scores coming from two different schools, but who knows...</p>