<p>There is no real way to come up with a list unless you have a large group of people who somehow attended several schools and were able to compare the experiences. The generalizations in this thread are pretty silly.</p>
<p>That list in post #39 is absurd without specifying a major. Which majors at Bates are harder than Berkeley EECS?</p>
<p>This statement was made about MIT: “B level work would easily get an A at most other colleges.” MIT is obviously a demanding school, but this is quite an assumption about the course requirements at other colleges. </p>
<p>“I know for a fact that I worked longer hours at my LAC than my friends did at state schools, even though we majored in the same subject.”
Well just to add another data point, I know for a fact that I worked fewer hours at my Ivy than my close friend who majored in the same subject at a state school.</p>
It’s not absurd at all, once you remember the constraints of the study. Remember that it comes from a law school, whose applicants are primarily majoring in English, Philosophy, Classics, Government, Political Science, and the like. Precious few would have majored in EECS. Since the majors of law school applicants are fairly consistent from one university to the next, it’s not a bad comparative tool.</p>
<p>Given the typical collegeconfidential posters’ rankings fetishes, I guessing that all over the world students who recently sent in a deposit to Pomona, Amherst, Bowdoin, Rice, Penn, Yale, Northwestern, Michigan, Columbia, Barnard, Stanford, Brown, Georgetown, Wellesley, or Berkeley are right now kicking themselves for not applying to Bates.</p>
<p>You may wish to read the Princeton grade deflation policy, a course which it ended up charting alone when no one followed. A recent article on grade inflation posted on this cite suggested Harvard gives 40% to 44% A’s, and I believe was considered one of the more inflated.</p>
<p>However, I am not sure grades correlate with hardest or easiest. It’s the course standards and student body that probably define tough versus easy.</p>
<p>“A recent article on grade inflation posted on this cite suggested Harvard gives 40% to 44% A’s, and I believe was considered one of the more inflated.”</p>
<p>So true! Almost everybody has a 4.0 average and spends their time on their residence roofs sipping pina coladas and reading the Wall Street Journal.</p>
<p>Why do some people feel the need to chime in with, “Tell me why this is worthy of an answer.” What jerks. The original poster was just curious. That’s good enough.</p>
<p>But the real answer, I think, is that a highly-motivated student studying a subject (s)he loves will find it easy. A student who considers the work to be drudgery will find it hard. This will be true at just about any college.</p>
<p>"Let me give an example from what I teach most often: Freshman Comp. I have an idea of what I think an “A” level paper is. I strive to teach the skills and critical thinking that go into one. Students come into my class from a variety of backgrounds, and ability levels, and some are not going to reach that level. Normally, most will not. I’ve had classes where no one got an A (unusual, but it happens.) I taught a class one semester where almost half the class got an A. (Even more unusual.) If I’d graded on a curve, than I’d be unduly rewarding students in the first type of class, and unfairly punishing students in the second. Why would I do that?‘’</p>
<p>Sorry but I just learned this browser doesn’t support quoting. That was a shock.</p>
<p>But you aren’t inflating grades; your grade distributions vary by class and that reflects the natural distribution of talent, meaning some will have more and some less, as well as the distribution of work ethic.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the responses so far. Lots of information and points to wade through.</p>
<p>I’m a little surprised that this thread has stirred up so much hostility. Maybe some of the posters who objected to the OP could explain why it bothered them. I’m really at a loss to figure that out. And maybe I could learn from that.</p>
<p>About the Boalt Hall data: I did a little more research today and found that they discontinued the weighting of GPAs twelve years ago. So that suggests that the numbers are at least 12 years old, maybe older.</p>
<p>It seems like the consensus (so far) is that the top colleges are more similar than different, and that engineering and physical sciences are much harder than humanities and social sciences. So, as we say in statistics, the within group differences are greater than the between group differences. Also sounds like posters agree that MIT, Olin, Caltech, are the toughest. But I don’t think there’s any agreement about what might be an easier college.</p>
<p>Oh, and in case anyone cares, here’s why I started the thread. First, just pure curiosity, like mantori.suzuki says. Second, I was thinking that you could probably break down the schools into three groups: hard, medium, easy. And just like Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear (Remember them? Think back to 1994 or so) each had their own preferences, some students might thrive in hard, some in medium, and some in easy. My son is clearly in one of those groups and I was thinking it might help us to narrow our final selections down a bit.</p>
<p>Most engineering schools (MIT, Caltech, GaTech, Illionis -engineering, Cornell-Engineering) are toughest for getting good grade. For example, average GPA for engineering school at Ga Tech is around ~2.70.</p>
<p>Most Ivy league schools have mass grade inflation. As points above, Harvard has 3.414 GPA. Even that considered low compared to its peers.</p>
<p>“The average GPA at Harvard last year was 3.414, which is actually relatively low compared to some of its peers.”</p>
<p>IBclass06: I get “snarky” as you would say when people post data without citing sources. Please provide a link for your above gpa to three decimal places.</p>
<p>This may all be kind of silly. It must depend on the major, the professor, the other students (if curved) etc. I happen to know that Harvard’s full-year music history class for majors lost half the students mid-year due to poor grades (I believe the students themselves opted out). I have heard that, as in this class, some first-year science classes sort of weed people out. </p>
<p>Perhaps grades are harsher in disciplines where there is a right or wrong answer, as oposed to humanities and social sciences, where a lot of discretion exists for grading.</p>
<p>“Perhaps grades are harsher in disciplines where there is a right or wrong answer, as oposed to humanities and social sciences, where a lot of discretion exists for grading.”</p>
<p>No really. At Georgia Tech, average Graduate student GPA is close to 3.4. The reason is that C is considered F in graduate school. Most professors only give A and B. I believe that’s pretty much situation for most undergraduate students at Ivy Leagues and Duke of world.</p>
<p>I’m with you on that. When a poster replied: “About 99% of us who went to any of them only went to one of them. And years ago! How we would know?”, I was floored. This same member has almost 10,000 posts on a college forum! Were all those posts about the one college he attended?</p>
<p>Mantori, I am many things but I don’t think I’m a jerk.</p>
<p>I was curious about the OP’s motivation in starting this thread because in the past, these threads are usually motivated by someone with an axe to grind. A big axe. Like moaning about all the kids who studied basket-weaving at Princeton with 4.0 GPA’s who got into Stanford Law School, while he got a 3.3 studying Astrology at a no-name college with very strict grade inflation policies and therefore couldn’t get into Law School at all.</p>
<p>Of course it doesn’t matter why… but answering the question required some context in my opinion. And life is not fair, playing field not level, everyone at Harvard is a dilletante but everyone at U Mass is a Renaissance man/woman… yeah, we all get that.</p>
<p>I think one problem here is with the term “grade inflation.” It suggests that grades are being given that haven’t been earned, or aren’t deserved. That could be true, but it could rather be the case that we’re seing differences based on grading philosophy (i.e. grading on a curve vs. grading to a standard). As somebody else noted, in many cases there is probably a mixture of the philosophies, or no clear philosophy.</p>