<p>I believe that the reasoning for tests where few, if any, students are expected to get 100% is to provide sufficient resolution for the professor to evaluate the students.</p>
<p>If two thirds of the students answer every question correctly, then the professor really has no basis for evaluating where each student stands in terms of understanding and applying the material to new situations.</p>
<p>In addition, if a very high percentage answers everything correctly, then the test may have been a simple recitation of known facts or duplication of previous work. There is some merit in asking students to wrestle with a twist or new set of conditions that challenges them to think outside the box using the tools they have presumably added to their aresenal in the course. In short: a true mental workout that presumes an education to be an exercise in developing thinking skills beyond the mere accumulation of facts.</p>
<p>I have no problem with that approach, if the professor uses common sense in applying some sort of curve. To give that kind of test and then flunk everybody would be counter-productive.</p>
<p>On another note: I find these "grade inflation" discussions to completely miss the point. A college professor could give a test that consisted entirely of a filling in a page from a coloring book. That test would not be "easy" if everyone got an A or "difficult" if everyone got a C. The grading curve is irrelevant as an indication of the true level of work required in the course. I really think we should step back from the arbitrary statistics and focus a bit more on the underlying learning that is going on and the degree of engagement with challenging material and ideas. Going to college to achieve some targeted GPA is quite different than going to college to learn to think, analyze, and communicate.</p>
<p>thanks, interesteddad. I guess I knew the rationale but was not able to articulate it as clearly. It is, in fact, the same as the rationale for giving the SAT to 7th graders.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The grading curve is irrelevant as an indication of the true level of work required in the course. I really think we should step back from the arbitrary statistics and focus a bit more on the underlying learning that is going on and the degree of engagement with challenging material and ideas. Going to college to achieve some targeted GPA is quite different than going to college to learn to think, analyze, and communicate.
<p>Go for it, Alu! I suppose, though, we won't really be able to see the proof of the pudding until the Class of '08 graduates and applies to law and med school; they are the first four-year victims of the new policy.</p>
<p>Exactly, marite. (This is my own concern, Alumother.) My D is not likely to want professional school, but is virtually certain to seek a Ph.D. in a humanities area. We have a close friend who finished with a high (but not 4.0) GPA at Berkeley a couple of yrs. ago) & had many fine & unusual assets to her grad school apps in humanities -- including multi-lingualism, a very strong & focused reason for her graduate program communicated on her apps (linked to a specific career path, etc.), & I believe did well on the GRE. She had also studied on both sides of the Atlantic. She was rejected by every top tier U for grad school -- we believe for reasons that could only be the GPA. Grad school admissions have become almost as competitive as undergrad admissions, it seems.</p>
<p>So whether it "should" matter (& I agree with others that it shouldn't be determinant, any more than an SAT score in itself should determine undergrad admissions), I'm concerned that it <em>will</em> matter.</p>
<p>Hopefully our D's and S's will not get too obsessed with this, nor we get too many grey hairs over it, but it's troubling that it's become such an Issue.</p>
<p>Graduate school admissions in the humanities are often MORE competitive than undergraduate admissions. In many top programs in english, history, and other humanities, the acceptance rate can be below 5%. When the rate is this low, chance is often the deciding factor. Sometimes it just comes down to which professors need students, whose research better fits the department, and other intangible factors. GPA really is neglible in PhD admissions.</p>
<p>I would concur with this assessment. Relationships are more important than GPA in landing good spots. I was accepted into a very exclusive grad program where hundreds were turned down for a few spots because of an established relationship with the professor with whom I wanted to study. I was applying from what is probably considered a 4th tier or lower (if there is such a thing) school. Many Ivy leaguers were rejected. My GRE's weren't so hot either.</p>
<p>In applying to Ph.D. programs, fit is even more important than in college admissions. It's no use having great preparation in Arabic, having taken tons of courses in Middle Eastern studies, traveled to the area, yadda, yadda, if one applies to a department that has no prof in Middle Eastern studies or where the prof is about to retire and is not taking on new students and won't be replaced.
That kind of calculus does not apply to med school and law school.</p>
<p>Well, not being a stupid person, the applicant I mentioned did not apply to dept's and schools which were void of her emphases or uninterested in her particular languages of fluency. So I'm not sure what marite's "reply" was all about, but it has nothing to do with the applicant I described. </p>
<p>But thank you, idad & PHampson, for your more relevant & helpful info on fit. This is also what I have been hearing more often since this applicant was rejected. (And this time around, she, like andi's S, has indeed broadened her levels of desired schools.)</p>
<p>Of course law schools COULD look carefully at what courses applicants took, and adjust for the grading standards at different colleges. This would require first a lot more work just to make the adjustments, and second reliable information about the relative difficulty of different undergraduate institutions. But there are thousands of colleges. How could any professional school keep up with the grading standards at each one? There is endless speculation on this point, but no one really knows how to equate an A from Princeton to a grade at Podunk. Perhaps Podunk has far fewer highly talented students, gives far fewer A's, but those it distributes are even harder to get than at Princeton. There is probably some lower-prestige place at which this is true, but who knows which one?</p>
<p>I think the evidence is clear that, whatever the law schools could do, they do not make these adjustments. According the BC Law Locator, 75% of Yale law students had GPA's in the 0.21 range from 3.79 to 4.0. There is simply no room for any adjustment. A rigorous liberal arts education may come in handy as a lawyer, but a 3.9 average is more useful when applying to Yale.</p>
<p>Princeton is hoping that its standards will be so well publicized in academia, after all it is P, that all the admissions committees will know and factor that in. But the committees could just as well conclude that grading standards are internal matters, unlikely to vary much from college to college, or at least elite Ivy to elite Ivy, and we want A students.</p>
<p>The good news for Princeton students is the study showing that these talented kids do well in life, because they are hard working talented kids. If they go to law school, even if the do not go to Yale, they will do well. </p>
<p>If the P representation at the top professional schools, how long will it take to, perhaps quietly, reverse this move?</p>
<p>I was merely trying to point out that there is a real difference between applying to Ph.D. programs and law and med schools. Afan has just made my point, regarding law and med schools, more thoroughly and eloquently than I did.<br>
With Ph.D. programs, you do have admissions committees in the relevant departments; they are aware of grading practices at peer institutions and are more likely to take into consideration Princeton's policies than med schools and law schools would. But they also look for fit between applicant and individual faculty members; there is also a bit of horsetrading going on among profs working in different subfields. Different departments treat GRE scores differently, as do individual members of admission committees.<br>
Some rec writers gain a reputation for writing effusive letters; if a previous applicant was admitted on the strength of such a letter but does not live up to his or her promise, the next one who sends in a rec from the same prof may not fare very well in the admission process.
The number of students who can be admitted is quite small. I know of departments that receive 600 applications for something like 25 slots, to be distributed among different subfields. That's a 5% admit rate or lower.
With all that in mind, admission into Ph.D. programs is less stat-driven than med school and law school. In a way, the latter act a bit like the adcoms at large state universities, while Ph.d. programs act more like adcoms at LACs. And, as at LACs, "showing interest" in the form of contacts with profs can help one's application.</p>
<p>This is a common thread in MIT/Caltech sites. So many chose these schools for sciences, then decide to try med school, and find the GPAs hurt them. Sometimes, I wish they would just look at standardized scores.</p>
<p>To earn A's at any of these top schools is HARD. Many top schools don't get credit for APs or CC courses. The bright kids could graduate in 2-3 years from a state U, with perfect GPAs. I don't think they would be challenged as much, but they could be in good or better position for MD/law school. I wish these professional schools would be less grade focussed</p>
<p>Marite: I went to the Harvard web site and looked up the information. I knew that summa was limited to 5% and that the change was made a LONG time before the Boston Globe story prompted Harvard to change its policies regarding honors degrees. I found this story from 1997 explaining the summa policies. So, you can read it yourself:</p>
<p>Again, the # of summas doesn't fluctuate much because it's limited to no more than 5% of the class. I hope that reading this on a Harvard web site will convince you that is the rule and it has been since 1997. However, my memory seems to have played a trick on me. I thought the # of summas hit 8%. This article says it hit 6.8%. </p>
<p>Second, Alumother says:</p>
<p>"I still don't believe that the top law schools and other grad schools won't choose on a ranking scale that obviates this problem. I have a source...I will check. " </p>
<p>Afan says:"Of course law schools COULD look carefully at what courses applicants took, and adjust for the grading standards at different colleges. This would require first a lot more work just to make the adjustments, and second reliable information about the relative difficulty of different undergraduate institutions. But there are thousands of colleges. How could any professional school keep up with the grading standards at each one? There is endless speculation on this point, but no one really knows how to equate an A from Princeton to a grade at Podunk. "</p>
<p>Look, I may sound snide, but I already explained how they do this IN THIS THREAD. Trying again, in more detail. It's very simple. There's something called LSDAS (Law School Data Assembly Service.)It's run by LSAC (Law School Admissions Council). If you apply to law school, you take the LSAT and submit your transcript to LSDAS. It refigures your gpa using a uniform system, so your LSDAS gpa may be different than that figured by the college you attend. It tells each law school you apply to what the median gpa of all the applicants to law school from the same UG college was. It also tells each law school what the median LSAT of applicants from the same UG was. It also tells each law school roughly where you stand among the applicants from the same UG applying to law school. The #s are adjusted each and every year. Got that? So, if the median gpa of folks who apply to LS from P'ton were a 3.2 and the median LSAT were a 168 and the median gpa of Harvard applicants the same year were a 3.7 and the median LSAT was 165, every LS admissions officer in the nation would conclude that P'ton had a tougher grading system than Harvard. If someone with a 3.6 had the highest gpa of any Princeton student applying to any ABA accredited law school, each and every LS to which that student applied would KNOW that the student had the highest gpa of all Princeton students applying.</p>
<p>Admissions officers do not even try to keep track of grading policies at thousands of colleges. Instead, they rely on the data about the actual grades earned by applicants to all ABA accredited LSs collected and calculated by the LSDAS based on actual transcripts.</p>
<p>I was not disbelieving you. You have confirmed that the discussion of honors preceded the discussion of grade inflation.</p>
<p>And I, too, will repeat what I said: the issue of honors is different from the issue of grade inflation. And yet, when Harvard has been criticized for grade inflation, it has always the large proportion of students receiving honors which has been brought up. Raise the bar for awarding cum laude and the problem pretty much disappears without a change in grading practices of the profs. And this is pretty much what has happened.
Nonetheless, concern over grade inflation was in the air long before the Globe raised the issue (using the proportion of students receiving honors as Exhibit A). In fact, one study I read linked grade inflation, inter alia, to the increasing use of student evaluations.
Princeton reacted to the widespread concern over grade inflation by actually imposing quotas. I think it's misguided, though apparently not so deleterious to Princeton students' chances of admission into law and med schools (thanks for the detailed explanation of how LSAC works). A student who produces work of A quality should receive an A, regardless of the performance of other students.</p>
<p>Jonri, I am aware of the LSDAS procedure. I took some comfort in it when Princeton first imposed this policy. However, one poster on the Princeton and law boards -- sakky, if I'm not mistaken -- regularly reminds us that students from MIT (where grading is far more deflated than elsewhere) do relatively poorly in law school admissions, despite their generally excellent LSATs. </p>
<p>To those who find this whole thread depressing: unfortunately, in law school admissions it makes a huge difference whether you have a 3.65, a 3.8 or a 3.9. Nitpicking is the order of the day.</p>
<p>No offense to the fine barristers in the crowd, but does anyone think that it might not be so bad for our country if more DIDN'T get into law school?</p>
<p>Comparing one of the alleged most inflated GPA schools with one with perhaps the lowest graduating GPA's produces some interesting results, and seems to support the notion that Grad Schools consider much more than GPA.</p>
<p>Harvard College:
Students Going to Law School Upon Graduation: 15%
Students Going to Medical School Upon Graduation: 20%
Students Going to Business School Upon Graduation: 13%
Students Going to Graduate School Upon Graduation: 25%</p>
<p>Reed College:
Students Going to Law School Upon Graduation: 7%
Students Going to Medical School Upon Graduation: 5%
Students Going to Business School Upon Graduation: 5%
Students Going to Graduate School Upon Graduation: 65%</p>
<p>The 7% for law school, though half of Harvard's is still very respectable as compared to others however. The 65% for grad school is quite frankly astonishing.</p>
<p>I don't know the particular source for your data. However, that data is usually from the graduating senior surveys and may be an expression of anticipated interest rather than actual admissions, especially in an era when it is very common to work for a year or two before grad or professional school.</p>
<p>Also, these percentages are usually stated as the percentage of students who plan to continue their post-grad education, not the entire student body.</p>
<p>I've looked and found it very difficult to get reliable statistics about actual post-grad activities.</p>
<p>The only hard data is that 20% of all Reed grads have actually gotten a PhD over the most recent ten year period versus 14.3% of all Harvard grads -- both very, very high percentages.</p>
<p>"This may be why over 60% of students at Harvard Law are from public schools."</p>
<p>Even if you include foreign universities and the military academies as public schools, the % of Harvard Law School students who attended public universities is closer to 25%-30% than 60%. See</p>