<p>I thought ya'll might be interested in this. The new "How to Apply to med school" website at Swarthmore gives the median GPA at Swarthmore for the Class of 2009:</p>
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Our experience at Swarthmore is that a strong B+ (3.42) average is a solid basis for applying. This places a student nearly in the top half of the graduating class, which had a median GPA of 3.53 in 2009.
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<p>Wow, that’s incredible. Everyone knows grade inflation is rampant, but I would have guessed Swarthmore at no more than a 3.33 (B+) average.</p>
<p>3.53 makes Swat more grade inflated than Harvard and the like, which is bad because the top schools should have the highest GPA’s, to have any semblance of a connection with merit.</p>
<p>(Yes, I know that 3.53 is a Swat median, whereas most GPA measurements at other schools are done as a mean. But still…3.53…)</p>
<p>[Yale</a> median GPA is 3.6, study finds - The Daily Princetonian](<a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2006/10/11/16142/]Yale”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2006/10/11/16142/) Yale GPA was 3.6 in 2006. I think median GPAs are much higher than mean GPAs.</p>
<p>Yes. Median will be higher than mean. At Swarthmore, you have to have a 2.0 to be a member of the graduating class. The half of the class with GPAs below 3.53 have a wider distribution than those above the medium where 4.0 is pretty much the cap.</p>
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<p>I don’t think it’s surprising. First semester is pass/fail. That’s often when a college student is going to get hit by a truck with a course or get a wake-up call on stepping up to college level work. Traditionally, colleges grads improve as students move along.</p>
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<p>Yeah, yeah. By that same unscientific study, Princeton has a median GPA of 3.3. </p>
<p>Whether due to pass/fail semester or not, Swarthmore’s reputation should change to reflect 3.53. Such a mismatch between perception and reality here…</p>
<p>I would not put much faith in an informal campus poll as an accurate measure of the real median GPA at Princeton or Yale.</p>
<p>That is a very different method than having the person who does class rank notation for every med school application using data from the Registrar’s office.</p>
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<p>I’m curious how much grade inflation has really gone on. The way to find out would be to compare these 2009 numbers to 1999, 1989, and 1979 numbers. Also, as ID pointed out, these are the figures for the graduating class. Some fraction of Swarthmore students don’t actually graduate. But, seeing as how that’s a small number of students, it probably wouldn’t shift the median by much. The range of possible GPAs is 2.0 to 4.0, and the figures are skewed by the fact that some of the weakest students will have already dropped out in previous years. It’s unclear whether 3.53 represents grade inflation, or if it’s just a product of weeding out the worst students over the years.</p>
<p>Historical comparisons would also be made more difficult by the fact that, traditionally, Swarthmore honors students did not receive grades. So, at any historical point in time, some of Swarthmore’s better students would not have been included in the GPA distribuition.</p>
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<p>That actually doesn’t concern me as much as comparing this average with averages at other schools at this moment. Doesn’t matter if 3.53 is not too different from 10 or 20 years ago; still Swat is not a hard school unless peer schools have significantly higher averages (which I can’t see being the case). People should stop over-blowing (or talking at all about) the rigor of courses, etc. supposedly unique to swarthmore.</p>
<p>I think of Swarthmore as exceptional for workload, not necessarily grade deflation.</p>
<p>ID, when did Honors students start receiving grades?</p>
<p>The school cannot have exceptional workload and unexceptional GPA at the same time unless:</p>
<p>a. Swat students work so much harder or are so much smarter than everyone else… Maybe, but doubt it.
b. Workload is disconnected from GPA… Well I guess one could be prideful about this, but it should then definitely not create fears in prospective students of not doing well or getting into grad schools</p>
<p>kon:</p>
<p>The thing that defines the Swarthmore academic experience is the degree of engagement by both students and facullty, which, over a period of many years, has led to a community culture where a high level is the standard.</p>
<p>What sets Swarthmore apart is not GPA or some silly notion that every class is great or that other schools don’t also have engaged students. On average, there is a high expectation at Swarthmore. Students tend to show up for class, tend to have done some of the reading, and tend to participate actively in the proceedings.</p>
<p>Keil:</p>
<p>I know how to find the answer on the honors, but I’ll have to get back to you when I get a chance to look it up. Sometime in the 1990s, off the top of my head. It was part of a fairly major overhaul of the honors program after a period of declining participation.</p>
<p>I think it’s quite possible that in comparison to more “laid-back” schools, Swarthmore students spend more hours on academics and achieve roughly similar GPAs. But I’ve seen no conclusive data to back up this hypothesis, nor to contradict it.</p>
<p>Class of 1997 first to graduate under the new Honors Program.</p>
<p>You can read a fairly detailed summary of the changes to the program, starting on page 17 of the 1999 Accreditation Self-Study:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/middlestates/pdfs/MS_1999_Self_Study-Part_1_of_5.pdf[/url]”>http://www.swarthmore.edu/middlestates/pdfs/MS_1999_Self_Study-Part_1_of_5.pdf</a></p>
<p>Honors participation had fallen to around 10% for a number of reasons. It made study abroad difficult. It made interdisciplinary study difficult. Students were able to get “Distinction” based on GPA in the non-Honors track, but no grades in Honors.</p>
<p>After the changes were introduced in 1997, participation increased to 30% over the first three years.</p>
<p>The main changes were:</p>
<p>a) cutting the number of honors preparations from six to four (allowing time to take other courses in other departments</p>
<p>b) Allowing study abroad and other ways of doing a preparation in addition to the standard double-credit seminar.</p>
<p>c) Grading all Swarthmore work (except thesis an exams, which are scored by the outside evaluators).</p>
<p>d) Ending the Distinction in Course option.</p>
<p>Thanks ID. I love reading strategic planning reports (and hadn’t previously found Swarthmore’s because they aren’t searchable under said term).</p>
<p>Most of the stuff in the 1999 self study are things that were done during the most recent capital campaign. The more relevant reports as the self study and visiting team report from last year’s Accreditation process. Links at the top left of this page:</p>
<p>[Swarthmore</a> College](<a href=“http://www.swarthmore.edu/middlestates/]Swarthmore”>Middle States Accreditation Process :: Swarthmore College)</p>
<p>^Yeah, I followed back the URL to read the Middle States evaluation and skim the most recent self-study.</p>
<p>The accreditation reports were password protected. An interested parent wrote the two committee chairs asking that they be made public and pointing to three peer colleges that have made theirs public. Turns out that the committee chairs wanted to make them public, too. The parents letter was forwarded to the new President who reversed the previous decision and made them pubic. I think it’s terrific. The self-study is a superb synposis of how Swarthmore sees itself and a great resource for documenting things like how the Arabic program came to be.</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s that much you can infer from just knowing the median GPA of the Swarthmore graduating class. I don’t think it means that it’s just as easy to get an A here than at other places. As for the rigor that some people mentioned, it depends a lot on what profs you have and what courses you take. I’m pretty sure (no offense) that a soc/anth major or Peace and conflict studies major at Swat has much less work than an honors math/physics major. Some ppl say they got more work in high school.</p>