We repeatedly see questions and comments on CC as to whether one or another T50 college has severe grade deflation. I thought it would be helpful to applicants and their families to have a thread that consolidates lived experiences around this. Does anyone have first-hand experience of real grade deflation policies and actualities in the last 5 years at a T50 school? Are these generalized or isolated to particular fields of study or groups of classes within the institution? This thread does not seek to discuss the merits of caring about grade deflation or its impact on graduate school or career opportunities. It is also not seeking to open a debate about statistics or data. It is just looking for lived experiences, even if anecdotal, within a discussion free of judgment or lecturing.
My D is a junior engineering student at Purdue (not sure you would consider it a T50 as I believe they are 53rd overall by USNWR, but they are T10 for engineering). The Purdue president has on his action items every year, making sure there is no grade inflation happening at the university. Purdue has done a lot of studies about their “grade inflation” because grade trends are creeping up although we are well below the peer schools (see link below). The studies conclude that some of that is because the university has gotten more selective with admission and improved quality of education, but it still leaves about 1/3 of the average grade change unexplained.
The first time D personally experienced grade deflation was last semester in one of her foundational courses for her major. The professor was forced by the department chair to change the grading rubric, AFTER the final exam, because too many students would have gotten As. (The rubric was published in the syllabus at the start of the semester).
Usually though, engineering courses at Purdue are graded on a curve, with the mean set to a C/C+ depending on the class. I believe the average engineering GPA is a 2.7. Average GPA for the university as a whole is around a 3.1.
Here’s the latest analysis from Purdue: https://www.purdue.edu/senate/documents/meetings/Causes-and-Consequences-of-Purdue-Grade-Inflation.pdf
If you prefer data over anecdotes, some colleges make grade distributions by course available. Of course, you still need to consider them in the context of admission selectivity.
In the context of Purdue engineering requiring a 3.2 GPA to be assured of your choice of major, that seems like a way to add the stress of uncertainty to most students.
@ucbalumnus not averse to data as you have presented it; just did not want thread to turn into competitive/ranking discussions leading to extended discussions about problems in the data, to which CC has a tendency. Testimonials such as that of @momofboiler1 provide context and details and describe impact on student psychology in ways the data can’t, for which a message board such as CC provides a unique venue.
Why conflate the two. One has nothing to do with the other.
@eyemgh glad you agree
Some old data here, but it can be helpful. It includes most schools.
Then why include T50? It completely muddies the waters. Schools have grade inflation/deflation or they don’t. T50 for engineering? For med school admission? For surfers? Why is this specious designation part of the question?
Grade deflation is just a myth. There isn’t a single school that experienced grade deflation in the recent past. There’re different degrees of grade inflation, however.
Because that is the subsegment on which I chose to focus the thread I started. Could have easily said T150; really meant highly selective colleges. Feel free to expand as you wish here or elsewhere.
Valid point re inflation. OK, so let’s call it low inflation rather than deflation; same difference. Actual experiences most welcome.
Good point. It’s really what level of inflation they exercise. We are so accustomed to inflation both in HS and at the Uni level that we assume schools are pushing the distribution down if it’s simply normal.
At Brown everyone is a star with an average graduating GPA above 3.6. In the program my son graduated from, 10% of the transcript grades given are F. Finishing with 3.6+ there puts a student not at the mean, but in rarefied air.
Not just Brown, of course. Here’s a link to the grade distributions of various Stanford courses:
It was a valiant attempt.
Fwiw, my D is graduating from Purdue, which has been working to avoid grade inflation, and which apparently has a horrible FYE program, from what some note at every opportunity.
Despite this, she had a $70k+ full-time job locked in back in November, with a large global corporation, even with “only” a 3.2. Her grades were slightly above average relative to others in her class and companies recruiting were apparently smart enough to understand the grade scale.
She was also involved in work recently noted in national publications, was nominated for a Senior Design project award, and may have here name on a patent. https://www.cnn.com/style/article/ultra-white-paint-scli-intl-scn/index.html
She’s had a great experience as a student, and I don’t think it would have been substantially different with the entire class shifted up or down several tenths of a GPA point. Despite an average GPA lower than similar institutions, they seem to do pretty well with job placement, reputation, rankings, etc.
In terms of data, Purdue provides the average awarded grade for every course area and every individual course over a certain size. The link is probably in the presentation linked to above.
Purdue is not a T50 University 
Grade inflation or lack thereof probably really only matters in a few situations.
- Where your GPA is being compared to the GPAs of students at other schools.
- Applying to transfer to a different college.
- Applying to medical school, law school, or similar GPA-sensitive professional or graduate program.
- Where your GPA is being compared to an external benchmark.
- Applying for a job that screens out applicants below a 3.0 GPA (3.0 is the most common cut-off).
It is less important when your GPA is only being compared within your college, since all of your competition will be affected by the same level of grade inflation overall (though variation across departments and courses could give some opportunity to cherry-pick courses for higher grades).
- Competitive secondary admission to major.
- Secondary admission to major based on benchmark GPA (the benchmark GPA will have been set to admit the desired number of students).
- Other GPA-based competitions or benchmarks within your college.
I saw the ultra white paint article on Purdue social media! So cool that was your daughter!!!
Evidently some of the public med schools that get most of their (in-state) applicants from the state flagship(s) may set a GPA standard because they’re familiar with the grading scheme there but private med schools do take in to account the rigor and grading scheme of various schools (among many other aspects) (but would want a good GPA). Top law schools would want a top GPA. European programs often have hard cutoffs, and large companies may have hard cutoffs too (not set too high). Otherwise, when it comes to virtually anything else, so much else would matter more. A CS major with a solid portfolio of work and a 2.5 GPA stands a better chance of landing a high-paying software job than an English major with a 4.0 GPA (or a CS major with a 3.0 GPA but no portfolio of work to show).
A good point to consider for those who may want to go overseas for graduate work. I did two masters degrees at two different UK universities, and both of them specified minimum grades for entry.