<p>Besides the obvious ones... (most Ivies & Stanford for inflation; U Chicago & Cornell for deflation)</p>
<p>And which schools outside of the top 15 are known for inflation?</p>
<p>Princeton is known for deflation.</p>
<p>Chicago is not "deflated." Over time, the average GPA has actually gone up significantly, but it is still low relative to other elite schools. Consider it grade "non-inflation," if you will.</p>
<p>"Grade deflation" suggests an active attempt to keep grades low.</p>
<p>NYU maybe (for deflation)? I remember reading about the "Stern Curve"</p>
<p>still, if grades at UChi are lower compared to the avg grades at other schools, a certain type of grade deflation is present. When looking within the system perhaps, the trends have reversed, but a static glance at the broad spectrum still places it with the grade deflators.</p>
<p>I see what you mean.... I just think it's silly to choose or avoid a school based on its grading practices. An A might be, on average, harder to earn at Chicago, and easier to earn at Stanford, but it doesn't mean your experience won't be enjoyable at one school and not the other.</p>
<p>BU has a new grading policy, so things will be tougher there. Reed is known for low grading. Wake Forest has low grading. Top public universities like Berkeley, Anne Arbor, and Chapel Hill are tough. Boston College has a reputation for being relatively easy. Harvey Mudd- very tough. I agree that Cornell and Chicago are tough, and believe that Hopkins is also. To me, Cornell sounds tougher than Chicago.</p>
<p>there's a joke about reed i saw on facebook: "i went to reed and all i got was this lousy GPA." but don't worry about grad school, apparently they know that reed doesn't have grade inflation.</p>
<p>Swarthmore is known for its toughness against inflation. </p>
<p>Yeah, Reed didn't even have grades until a few years ago. I am not surprised the grading is really tough.</p>
<p>Correction: Reed has always recorded grades on students' transcripts, but grades are not otherwise given to students unless they ask to see them.</p>
<p>As has St. John's College, which does not give students the grades, but for the sake of GPA calculations and grad school admissions. </p>
<p>I believe Chicago's average GPA is a 3.26 and Cornell's is a 3.1-abouts. Cornell, it seems, does more grading on a curve than Chicago, and for what it's worth, it may be easier to get an A at Chicago than it is at Cornell. I would be inclined to add that the typical class at Chicago is more demanding than the typical class at Cornell-- my older brother was able to fly through his first-year writing seminars and econ classes with a B/B+ average, and I have never heard of somebody "flying" through a class at Chicago, much less with a B/B+.</p>
<p>Wow. How do people go to these schools and then successfully compete for grad school slots?</p>
<p>Because grad schools consider the undergrad school when looking at a GPA, and rely heavily on references.</p>
<p>northwestern chem—DEFLATION!</p>
<p>Check gradeinflation.com. There’s a list of individual schools at the bottom that has the average GPAs of graduating seniors for each school.</p>
<p>Average GPAs of at least 3.4:
Bucknell - 3.4
NYU - 3.41
Northwestern - 3.41
“Washington University” (guessing this is WUStL) - 3.41
Whitman - 3.41
Carleton - 3.42
Columbia - 3.42
Dartmouth - 3.42
Georgetown - 3.42
Haverford - 3.42
Duke - 3.44
UPenn - 3.44
Harvard - 3.45
Wesleyan - 3.46
Amherst - 3.48
Vassar - 3.48
Macalester - 3.49
Pomona - 3.51
Yale - 3.51
Swarthmore - 3.53
Stanford - 3.55
Brown - 3.61</p>
<p>The more prestigious publics tend to have higher GPAs too, though most of them seem to be around 3.2 (UC Berkeley, UCLA, UNC, UVA, and UW-Madison are the ones I’m thinking about, but there are probably a couple others).</p>
<p>EDIT: hahaha, I didn’t even notice that the last reply before the one other one from today was from 2007…</p>
<p>Apparently, only ten people have graduated from Reed with a 4.0 GPA over the last 30 years, and some of them were transfers.</p>
<p>I’d say Reed and Cornell. Princeton is also known for “grade deflation,” but I remember reading that the workload there is not that demanding. (A current Princeton student is welcome to correct me, of course.)</p>
<p>Oh, and to allay another poster’s fears, Reed is known for producing a higher percentage of PhD-holders than almost any other school in the States, so I don’t think going to grad school with a lower GPA from there would be impossible.</p>
<p>BU is known nationally for this. It is horrible what they do to their students. Even the NY Times chimed in:
<a href=“Can Tough Grades Be Fair Grades? - The New York Times”>Can Tough Grades Be Fair Grades? - The New York Times;