<p>"If the grades are undeserved, you don't think the consequences are negative for the students and professional/graduate schools as well as the schools."</p>
<p>Oh, no, just the opposite. Prof. schools especially LOVE to report higher GPAs among their applicants and their acceptances; it makes them look better without lifting a finger! AND it makes it easier to accept legacies and wealthy folks without feeling they have to justify themselves - they can just rely on the letters of recommendation from the senator on the appropriations committee. It's a win-win for everyone!</p>
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<p>Personally, I don't think that loads of students are running out to volunteer now because of grade inflation.<<</p>
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<p>Perhaps not--but if you know you need decent grades for grad school, etc., and you are getting squeezed by grade deflation, you're going to have to spend more time studying and less time volunteering and playing in the orchestra or whatever it is that you've been doing in addition to your schoolwork. </p>
<p>Not that that in itself is a bad thing...but a university can lack color and depth if it were nothing but a place to study (didn't someone say that a lot of musical people at Reed no longer play their instruments in an orchestra because of the crush of schoolwork?). </p>
<p>PS: not to pick on Reed, but that was the only comment I could remember)</p>
<p>I said that. The admissions officer we met with at Reed told us pointblank (because my d. was a music major) that 75% of Reed students had played an instrument before they got to Reed, but in a good year, they were lucky to get 30 students in the school orchestra, and could only operate by relying on ringers from the community.</p>
<p>That's not necessarily a bad thing, if that's what a student is looking for. But, personally, I think they'd do better with a little more grade inflation.</p>
<p>We all know that Reed is an un-American place, right?</p>
<p>There are very few social problems that grade inflation couldn't help solve.</p>
<p>It is not just the grade one gets, but how hard one has to work to get it. Perhaps there should be some sort of agony index to go along with the GPA report that grad schools could use.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd likes to brag about its grade deflation. Only one student has ever graduated with a 4.0 in the entire history of the school. Which I guess is why some people consider it to be a poor pre-med school. Not because you can't learn the chemistry, physics, and biology there that you need for medical school, but because you won't be going anywhere with that all that nice knowledge and a bunch of Bs and Cs on your transcript.</p>
<p>"Who wants to accept a gradegrind?" That's the point, after suffering to get that high GPA, the student will sail through the professional school making less work for everyone.</p>
<p>Looks like everywhere else. And in "science" and "engineering" no less. ;)</p>
<p>But makes for great cocktail conversation when waiting on-line for a meal at the neighborhood soup kitchen.</p>
<p>"I would have been a doctor," he said, scratching his flea bites, adjusting his bottle-green glasses that were missing one lens, and shrugging his shoulders, "Instead I went to Harvey Mudd. You know, grade deflation...."</p>
<p>"I know how it is," said his friend, his speech slurred, picking at his scabs, and blowing his nose on a page torn out of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, "I went to Reed."</p>