Holy cow … that’s ridiculous …
I don’t think I ever took a course where a mean would be C/C+ …
Always been B- in my experience …
2.7 would be a B- . If grades were centered around C+, then GPAs would be in the 2.3 range.
Dartmouth College indicates that Dartmouth GPAs were 2.11 in 1926 and 2.33 in 1931. Must have been a lot of “gentleman C” grades then…
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Grade inflation at Cornell. 
indubitably 
Back in the days when “C” actually meant “average” rather than “subpar”.
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Most students will take at least one course outside their major/semester. My D’s non engineering courses are much easier and generally easy As. That helps offset the engineering course GPA for many students.
I was specifically speaking of D’s experience within the COE.
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@momofboiler1 Yes! I saw this too! @RichInPitt What an amazing research experience! How did your daughter get involved?
I have to say I feel the thread has been hijacked by discussions about how inflation is relevant or not, and other side discussions. I would appreciate if we stayed on topic. If you have no first hand experience to share, then please start your own thread on the topic of your choice, including why grade inflation is or should be irrelevant.
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As a reminder, and really more for others reading this thread who may be interested in Purdue: “Students who have completed all FYE requirements with a cumulative GPA > 3.20 and an EAI > 3.20 have the top priority in the T2M process. If the degree program is not over critical capacity, the student will be admitted to his or her first choice. Most programs are not at capacity and will accept all students who complete FYE requirements with GPA and EAI of 2.00 or greater.”
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It would be helpful to students and prospective students if they actually published historical thresholds so that students and prospective students knew which majors typically admitted at GPA and EAI of 2.00 and which majors were more competitive (and how competitive).
Otherwise, students and prospective students have no choice but to assume that their intended major may be one that needs a GPA and EAI of 3.20.
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Several colleges have experienced grade deflation, but it is usually temporary and due to unique conditions, such as a change in university directive on grading, change in major distribution, decrease in selectivity, etc. For example, a report summarizing Princeton’s grade distribution during the period where they tried to limit A grades to 35% of students is at https://www.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/documents/2017/05/PU_Grading_Policy_Report_2014_Aug.pdf .
2002 – Average GPA =3.38, 47% A grades, 38% B grades
2003 – Average GPA =3.34, 48% A grades, 42% B grades
2004 – Average GPA =3.33, 46% A grades, 44% B grades
2005 – Average GPA =3.28, 42% A grades, 48% B grades
2006 – Average GPA =3.27, 41% A grades, 47% B grades
As one might expect, Princeton’s grade deflation policies did not go well. Many/most professors didn’t follow the grading recommendations. Some example quotes from the linked report are below: It also contributed to some Princeton students having less success in post graduate activities, such as attending professional schools that closely look at GPA.
Princeton has long since abandoned this grading policy, but they still have lower grades than peers. For example, students in both the Harvard and Stanford senior surveys report a median GPA of 3.8, with ~90% reporting >= 3.5. In contrast, Princeton’s average is around 3.5.
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Isn’t that English major dumpster diving?
OP, you asked for “Lived Experiences” but I surmise that no one had that experience, because grade inflation is so gradual that none of us stayed in college long enough to personally experience it. Comparison based on personal experiences is just extremely difficult, if not impossible.
As an example, my son is attending the same college I attended, known as one of the most challenging schools (probably one of those people claim to have experienced grade deflation). He’s in CS and I was in physics. He hasn’t had a single A- (I had a few). We took mostly different courses (with only a few overlaps). He took more CS and applied math courses and I took more physics and pure math courses. Were his courses easier? It’s hard to say. He took his CS theory course (supposedly a very challenging course in CS) and CS systems course (one of most time consuming) in his freshman year, his algorithms course (another supposedly very challenging course in CS) in his sophomore year. I took none of those. Do I think professors in my days graded a bit harsher? Yes. But I have no proof and it was a generation ago.
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I was not looking for dynamic trends over time beyond what is realistic for anyone to have. Perhaps deflation or inflation is a misnomer, and the right “snapshot” term would be distinctively harsh grading. Applicants and their parents care about snapshots and anecdotes of this. Whether they should or not is for another thread. By continuing to fight the validity of the question, some might be dissuading participation by others with valid lived experiences. Thanks for your contribution on the latter front.
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Perhaps a better place to survey would be a group of biology majors or recent graduates who washed out of the pre-med path due to grades/GPA too low. They will probably claim that their college has grade deflation.
It’s a very hard question to get a answer from anecdote. One person’s experience can be influenced by many things and probably isn’t sufficient to get an accurate picture of a whole department, let alone a whole school.
My son’s alma mater (Cal Poly) tracks all the quarterly course grades given. Not test grades…transcript grades. It’s not public facing, but every once and a while a professor will hand them out and they get posted on places like Reddit. It ranks every department by the percentage of A or B awarded. It also shows the total number of grades given. The tiniest department only gave out 79 grades. That means there were probably only a couple of classes. Math on the other hand had over 5000, because nearly every CP major takes some sort of math. The variability is interesting.
Within engineering for example the easiest grading department (MatE) gave 79% As and virtually no Ds or Fs. The toughest grading departments (ME) gave 36% As and 10% D/F. Math is brutally hard with 20% As and 15% Fs.
So, for this particular school, and I don’t know if others follow suit, a single opinion can’t paint an accurate picture of the whole institution. A ME who had lots of classes in two departments that notoriously grade harshly would have a completely different perspective from a Marketing major who didn’t.
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Not looking for accurate or scientific. Thanks so much for sharing.
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Anyone with direct experiences on this (one way or another) at Swarthmore or any the NESCAC schools (especially Williams, Amherst, Bowdoin and Wesleyan)? William and Mary?
Hopefully you’ll get direct anecdotal input. In the meantime, here’s the data for those institutions.
https://www.gradeinflation.com/Swarthmore.html
https://www.gradeinflation.com/Williams.html
https://www.gradeinflation.com/Amherst.html
https://www.gradeinflation.com/Bowdoin.html
https://www.gradeinflation.com/Williamandmary.html
Such interesting data - do you have any idea where to find current numbers?