<p>My D is currently a bio sophomore student at Pomona. Her last semester GPA
is 11.3. The requirement of the Pomona Scholar award is top 20% of the whole 2008 class regardless of majors. I just learnt that she was not on the Pomona Scholar list because the cutoff GPA for last semester, sophomore class is 11.4. This is equivalent to 3.8 and also implies over 20% of 2008 class achieved 3.8 GPAs. This is certainly a huge grade inflation.I have heard grades for science majors are a lot harder, especially Chemistry and Molecular Biology majors. As an example, the minimum requirement to apply for Beckman Scholar at Pomona is top 10% of its class and typical cutoff point is 11.2.</p>
<h1>From Pomona College Website:</h1>
<p>Pomona Scholar Eligibility for Beckman Scholar Applications.</p>
<h1>Sophomores with GPAs at or above 10.75 and juniors whose GPA places them among the top 10% of majors in Chemistry, Biology, Molecular Biology, and Neuroscience (in the first two years, this cutoff has been at 11.2 GPA) are eligible to apply if majoring in one of these sciences. If the student is receiving financial aid, because of the high honor accorded by this award, Pomona College will not deduct the award from any financial aid award to the student.</h1>
<p>It appears top 20% of Pomona students achieve 3.8, at least for sophomore class and only top 10% of Science major achieve 3.73. This may be the
main reason many premed students majored in non-science and humanities
areas. Any comments regarding this grade discrepancy among science and non-science majors?</p>
<p>I think that at any college, there is going to be a notable discrepency between the GPA's of science and non-science majors. The average grade in a humanities course is usually significantly higher than the average grade in science courses. There are probably a couple of reasons for this, but one might be that humanities courses by nature have more subjective grading. However, out of the people I know who are pre-med, the majority of them (though not the vast majority) are still science majors. I'm pretty sure medical schools know that it's harder to get a GPA in the sciences. If you look at med school admissions statistics, science courses usually have their own calculated GPA, which is almost always lower than the total GPA. For my situation, I think it's funny how you mention that it's harder to get a higher GPA as a science major, because my science GPA is much higher than my humanities one - it's much easier for me to get an A in science course than get an A in an English, philosophy, or history course.</p>
<p>Thank you gnatcire. I remember a premed advisor at Pomona told us that sometimes a non-science major becomes a stronger med school applicant than science major because of higher gpa. </p>
<p>If you look at mdapplicants.com, you don't see any applicant (science major) from top LACs such as Amherst, Williams and Pomona with gpa over 3.8. On the other hand, many applicants from IVYs or other state universities have near perfect GPAs, >3.8. I don't know this is due to the size of school or simply grading policy for science majors. Can we even generalize that it's harder to get very high overall GPA for science majors from Pomona than UCLA, Berkeley or even Stanford? Another explanation is that top LACs require science students to take sufficient number of humanities courses. Non-LAC colleges do not have this requirement and most science students focused on science classes only. Certainly, Pomona grade inflation does not apply to science majors. This is just my two cents.</p>
<p>One thing that I believe also affects Pomona GPAs is that in many humanities/social science courses there is a lot of cross-registration from the other Claremont Colleges. I know it's not too PC to say this, but the Pitzer kids are very often weaker students than the Pomona kids. Thus, the LOW grades in the class go to non-Pomona students, and the Pomona kids walk away with As. There is not as much cross-registration in science courses, since Harvey Mudd has their own courses and the other 3 schools don't attract as many students who take science courses. </p>
<p>I don't know any statistics on this or anything; it's just my observation and the observation of a professor who said that most of her lower grades go to non-Pomona students.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Certainly, Pomona grade inflation does not apply to science majors.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't know, anydad. I think that it does apply to science majors, but perhaps not to the same extent, as is the case with most schools. Perhaps at Pomona the difference is significant, as it is with many, maybe even most schools.</p>