<p>Mini forgot the "footnote" associated with that data:</p>
<p>Until recently, Swarthmore's Honors students did not receive grades. So the average GPA of thirty years ago used for comparison did not include the top 35% of the students. The average GPA today does include the top 35% of the students. Obviously, the addition of the top 35% of the students will increase the average!</p>
<p>I do not agree with the notion that there has been grade "deflation" at Swarthmore. That would be hard to imagine. </p>
<p>Whether there has been grade inflation is impossible to determine. The data in the survey Mini cites is pulled from so many inconsistent sources that it is of questionable value. My hunch is that there has probably been some grade inflation at Swarthmore over time. </p>
<p>With the changes in elite college admisisons since the 1960s, it's pretty much inevitable that the floor of the grading curve be established at a passing level or the philosophical underpinnings of the entire admssions process falls apart.</p>
<p>Yeah, yeah. I didn't forget ANYTHING. And the same could be said at 50 other schools, too. For all you know, the top 35% of students could have DECREASED the average, because they took more difficult "honors" courses. There are athletes at other schools - top schools, like our common alma mater - who take basic "rocks and stars" (I knew lots of them) who never got less than an A, while honors biology students in pre-med weed-outs got Cs. (I took the same course, not being a pre-med, and I got C's too.) (I had a foster kid at Princeton, as well, and taught undergrads at UChicgo, so I know from whence I'm speaking.)</p>
<p>I'm just saying, don't use numbers that you know to be inconsistent. The data cited from the link states that the method for the 1976 data was "unspecified", not even known whether it was average or median, pulled from a third hand reference (an alumni letter to editor of the college magazine citing a magazine article citing upspecified data 30 years after the fact).</p>
<p>Now, if we want to compare real data apples to apples instead of peached to kumquats, I did find some of that. The Swat number for the earlier year still is clouded by the fact that Honors graduates in 1982 did not receive grades, but at least it's comparing specified data from consistent years:</p>
<p>Median GPA in 1982 and 1997 for five schools that are noted for rigorous academics and tough grading:</p>
<p>As I have pointed out earlier, I do not believe that it is possible to have the admissions philosophy in place at elite colleges since the late 1970s/early 1980s and NOT have grade inflation. That admissions philosophy and flunking kids due to poor academic preparation are mutually incompatible. Thus, I have to assume that the floor on grade scale has been raised, which in turn tends to shift the scale upwards in order to achieve any meaningful distinction in performance. This theory has been supported by a professor brother who has been explicitly told by deans and department heads at least one major state university system that flunking kids (integral to today's admissions philosphy) is not tolerated by the university, period, regardless of their academic performance in his class.</p>
<p>As a practical matter, grade "inflation" is irrelevant. Does it really matter how we got here? It seems to me that the relevant information for students and those seeking to hire students from various colleges is: what is the median GPA or grade distribution NOW?</p>
<p>An interesting side effect of grade inflation is that it effectively compresses the scale and makes it more difficult to distinguish good students from average students. When the floor comes up and the top is fixed at 4.0 then the gradation becomes coarser.</p>
<p>At the HS school level weighted grades are what adcoms turned to when everybody started showing up with a 3.8 or 3.9 and schools had 23 valedictorians every year. Graduate and professional schools seem to deal with it by increasingly relying on LSAT, GRE and other standardized tests.</p>
<p>I find it interesting that one school that has a reputation for grade deflation, (University of Chicago) practically leads the pack for inflation according to the chart at <a href="http://www.gradeinflation.com%5B/url%5D">www.gradeinflation.com</a> referenced in a previous post. Am I reading the chart wrong or is grade deflation a "myth" at Chicago.</p>
<p>So the reality is that, regardless of how they got there, Williams, a notorious grade inflater, and Swarthmore, an infamous grade deflator, end up with average GPAs being virtually identical.</p>
<p>It's just a non-issue, made of smoke-and-mirrors. If Swarthmore or UChicago students like to believe that their school is especially "hard", let 'em, if it makes them feel better.</p>
<p>I'm not aware that Williams is a "notorious grade inflator". Just the opposite. Williams has always had a reputation for first-class (and tough) academics. Likewise, I've never seen any indication that Swarthmore has had grade "deflation" nor anyone who actually believes that. Swarthmore's own administration says that they have had grade inflation over the last 25 years. I don't know how any school with an agressive two-tier admissions philosophy could avoid grade inflation. You either have to have a two-tier grading system or you have to compress the scale or the grading system and the admissions policy are at odds.</p>
<p>Here's a blurb from an old 1999 Phoenix article that listed the schools considered to be tough graders by the admissions committee at the UCB Law School:</p>
<p>"The University of California at Berkeley Law School used to use a quantitative GPA analysis chart before this official method of analysis was outlawed earlier this decade. In Berkeley's chart, Swarthmore students had the lowest GPAs of any school in the country, with only Colgate, Duke, Johns Hopkins, and Williams coming relatively close."</p>
<p>Well, the grade inflation lists the various schools. Swarthmore isn't even close to having the lowest GPAs in the country, and they are virtually the same as the other LACs, and most of the Ivies. Maybe it's because only less qualified Swarthmore students apply to Berkeley's law school?</p>
<p>Harvard is notorious for grade inflation, and the trend seems to bear that out: 317-3.39 (1985-2001). But the current GPA of 3.39 is only a shade higher than that of Pomona at 3.36 and Williams at 3.32, both of which are "noted for rigorous academics and tough grading" (quoting Interesteddad). On the chart, it also seems to be in the lower half of the upward trending graph. What am I missing?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well, the grade inflation lists the various schools.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Except that is lists peaches for some schools (method unspecified) and kumquats for others (median GPA, or median GPA on a 100 point scale converted to the 4.0 scale).</p>
<p>That's my whole point. That particular website is relatively useless in comparing different schools or even the same school over time, unless they have consistent data. Even then, you have to be a little careful because there are some significant swings (in both directions) year to year, so taking a "snapshot" of one year could be misleading.</p>
<p>I did not find an elite college on the list with a median GPA listed, that was lower than Harvey Mudd. This is, of course, what you would expect, since science and engineering courses are generally regarded as "harder" from a grading standpoint than the somewhat more nebulous humanities and social science courses. That's why they call 'em "geeks", I guess.</p>
<p>I wonder if majors is taken into account- some schools the sciences seem to demand much more time ( papers & labs- while non lab classes require only papers)I know students majoring in things like English/History/Psychology who don't seem to be working nearly as hard as students majoring in Chemistry/Physics/Biology but get much better grades.
I know some schools have a very small percentage of students majoring in the lab sciences, is that taken into consideration when viewing the mean/</p>
<p>I think Harvard's reputation for "grade inflation" was established in the 1990s when its median GPA ranged upwards from 3.3 to a max of 3.42. It has been falling back since then, presumably the result of the attention paid to the issue of grades.</p>
<p>The info I found from a Swarthmore article showed that their median GPA rose to 3.24 by 1994, but then remained level through the date of the article in 1999. I don't know what it is today.</p>
<p>On a four-point scale, each change of .1 in median GPA represents a 2.5% increment. Not earthshattering, but probably meaningful.</p>
<p>I am starting to worry about grade deflation a year before d will graduate.
THe UW grad school for the field she wants to pursue I believe requires a 3.5 college GPA along with test scores. As the average GPA at her school is 2.7 and she will be lucky if she gets a 3.00, I am wondering if they actually take average grades into account or if they put all applications who don't meet stated requirements in reject pile.</p>
<p>While there is some value to analyze the trend of GPA among schools, it only offers a partial view of the issue. </p>
<p>The real issue are how hard the curriculum is and how hard students have to work for their grades. No matter how one looks at it, one cannot compare the difficulty of the curriculum at Harvey Mudd with a huge number of schools that offer all kind of measures to ensure HIGH PASSING grades for a lesser qualified contingent of students, ranging from offering a huge number of fluff classes and offering generous pass/fail or late withdrawals, to esoteric GPA computations. </p>
<p>It is not hard to identify those schools. Several of them seem to have invented the term of rampant grade inflation.</p>
<p>I would hope that the graduate schools would take into account performance within a specific school. Obviously a 3.0 at one school is not the same as a 3.0 at another.</p>
<p>Arte you sure that the 3.5 requirement is the minimum and not the average. For example, I was looking at the statistics for MBA programs and noticed that the average GPA for Stanford was 3.57 while the 10-90 percentile was 3.14-3.92</p>
<p>I went back and looked it wasn't a 3.5 GPA- ( although automatic admittance to Uw undergrad I think is 3.7) required GPA is 3.00 to apply to graduate school.
However that may still be tricky considering that her course load is tough ( microbio- biochem-organic chem) and that her retake of Organic chemistry won't remove the F spring semester from her transcript :(</p>
<p>I don't know about now, but back when I was applying to grad schools the minimum GPA requirements were pretty strictly enforced. If your GPA wasn't above that minimum, you got your rejection notice by return mail. I don't think they even read the rest of the app.</p>
<p>Interesteddad, where do you find that issue of the Phoenix with those Berkeley admit numbers? Or is it just something in your files?</p>
<p>Patsfan, I wish I thought you were right about diff schools being seen differently, but sakky, who often posts on these boards, puts up all sorts of numbers to show that this is not the case. Not sure what to believe at this point...</p>
<p>I saw this on another thread and thought that it was probably as significant in the big scheme of things as GPA. I admit that I do not know the source, but it adds a different perspective on the interpretation of grade inflation and deflation. (see which ivy is easiest thread - under college selection....)</p>
<p>percent graduating with honors:
Harvard 91%
Yale 51%
Princeton 44%
Brown 42%
Dartmouth 40%
Johns Hopkins 35%
Duke 28%
Columbia 25%
Stanford 20%
Cornell 8%</p>
<p>In the discussion of grade inflation, one distinction that got lost was the difference between policies regarding graduating with honors and grading.</p>
<p>Short of instituting a policy about percentages of As as has been voted in at Princeton, it's easier to establish policies regarding the granting of honors than pushing profs to deflate grades. different colleges have different policies regarding honors.</p>
<p>Let's compare Harvard (91% graduating with Honors) and Stanford (20%). For the years 1986 and 1992 (Stanford data reported on gradeinflation.org only go to 1992):
Harvard GPAs: 3.21/3.31.
Stanford GPAs: 3.35/3.44.
Two theories: the Stanford students are/were on average smarter than Harvard students; or Stanford had greater grade inflation throughout this whole period. </p>
<p>What accounts for the discrepancy in Honors? It does not appear to be due to grade inflation at Harvard; rather, it is due to a lower threshhold for awarding Honors, especially cum laude.</p>