List of schools with grade inflation/deflation?

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Does anyone know a list of schools with grade inflation and a list of schools with grade deflation- particularly in premed programs? Not like every college, but say the Ivies, and other top schools?</p>

2

<p>Princeton - grade deflation
UChicago - grade deflation
Harvard - grade inflation
Brown - grade inflation
Dartmouth - grade inflation
Stanford - grade inflation</p>

3

<p>I think dartmouth is deflated and princeton a grade normal school</p>

4

<p>My impressions based on combination of student stats and average GPA’s:</p>

<p>Princeton: Quite Deflated
Harvard: Slightly Deflated
Yale: Neither
Chicago: Deflated
Brown: Inflated
Stanford: Inflated
Dartmouth: Neither
Columbia: Neither
Penn: Neither
Cornell: Slightly Deflated</p>

5

<p>

A former Duke professor has studied this extensively and concluded that, based on GPAs over the past 40 years and the rise in test scores, the average GPA at top schools should be around 3.0 at the highest. Needless to say, that is hardly the case at virtually any elite university.</p>

<p>I doubt you could convincingly argue for grade deflation at top schools, including Chicago, Cornell, and Princeton. At best they merely may not inflate grades.</p>

6

<p>^ When I use inflated or deflated, I am referencing differences relative to my perception of the average standards nationally at this moment; I am not referring, as many do when they use those terms, to trends over time, which would be of little interest to any student today.</p>

7

<p>Princeton: Quite Deflated
Harvard: Inflated
Yale: Inflated
Chicago: Deflated
Brown: Hyper Inflated
Stanford: Inflated
Dartmouth: Slightly Deflated
Columbia: Slightly Deflated
Penn: Neither
Cornell: Deflated</p>

8

<p>

</p>

<p>Your Harvard characterization seems off, given the numbers (most recent GPA’s as reported [here](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/]here[/url]):”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/)):</a></p>

<p>Harvard: 3.45
Dartmouth: 3.42
Columbia: 3.42
Penn: 3.44</p>

<p>Because Harvard’s students do better on standardized metrics, it’s reasonable to expect that its average GPA would be higher than the others’ even if it had no grade inflation.</p>

9

<p>In the “school reputation” business, they report the number of pre-meds who get accepted to med school. I believe another stat is the % who got into one of their “top 3” med sch choices. So, at top schools, including LACs, I have heard the trend is to make pre-med classes tough, to not be generous with grades, in order to dissuade or weed out those who are not the best med school material.</p>

10

<p>can you give me a link please to the % admitted to med school?</p>

<p>Thanks to everyone else too!</p>

11

<p>Various colleges will give you their percentage. They’ll say 80%, 100%. Google it. Even CC has a stringof these questions and you’ll see the silliest schools with a high %. Can’t view it as an absolute; have to put it in the context of the number of freshmen pre-meds. This quote says it-</p>

<p>Beware of colleges that boast of extremely high medical school acceptance rates from their premed programs. These schools often achieve those high numbers by weeding out their premed students aggressively, so that only the best premed students are even allowed to complete the program. You can calculate a school’s “true” acceptance rate by dividing the number of premed graduates it has accepted into medical school by the number of current freshmen premed majors. A 90% med school acceptance rate probably means that the school rejected students who would have been borderline medical college admits before they finished their premed programs!</p>

12

<p>What are your thoughts about the other top 25 schools? Inflated or deflated?</p>

13

<p>Thanks for the correction, seems like my data is a little old.</p>

14

<p>Cornell has relatively a lot of scienc-y & engineering majors, only 1/3 of its students are enrolled in its Arts & Science College. The dean’s list GPA cutoff for engineering is lower than for CAS, indicative of somewhat stricter grading policies.</p>

<p>I don’t know that its grading in humanities, social sciences, or even engineering is much different than for equivalent subjeects at other colleges.</p>

15

<p>Ok lets be realistic- every school in the US is grade inflated/decent apart from Uchicago/Cornell/Caltech and a handful of public schools.</p>

16

<p>why not just look at the data? draw your own conclusions:</p>

<p>[recenttrendsindschools2.gif</a> (image)](<a href=“recenttrendsindschools2.gif]recenttrendsindschools2.gif (image)”>recenttrendsindschools2.gif (image))</p>

<p>[National</a> Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Universities](<a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/]National”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/)</p>