<p>I know this subject has been on forums before but it is a new topic for me and we could use some advice. My S is trying to choose between Princeton, Dartmouth and Cornell (we've pretty much eliminated Brown from the decision because the FA package was so bad). The FA packages are all good, with Princeton's being the best. Each school has a pro and con and I think he might lean towards Princeton - he likes their science/engineering approach, as part of a liberal arts curriculum - but because he is used to a certain level of collaboration among the top students in his high school, I am concerned if the issue of grade deflation diminishes a collaborative atmosphere at Princeton. </p>
<p>It is not the level of work that concerns us about Princeton - he is used to taking 5 AP courses a year, and has taken 2 AP sciences courses for the last two years - so I have no doubt he could do the work and do well. My concern is if this subject of grade deflation I keep reading about creates a cut throat atmosphere among the students. If Princeton has created a zero sum game when it comes to grades, then that has to diminish any sense of collaboration among the students. It would only be human nature. It's not so much a concern that his grades may end up a percentage point lower than another student from another school when it comes to applying to grad school, because I have to believe the Princeton reputation counters that, my concern is on what kind of atmosphere does it create within the classroom. </p>
<p>Or is this not an issue in the math/science area? In a math class, there is no subjective grading, so how could a quota system for grades be used? So with his kind of major, am I worrying needlessly? I would love some honest answers from students presently at Princeton or recent grads about just how bad or how irrelevant this issue is. Should it be a paramount consideration in making the decision between schools? We will also be attending Princeton Preview and asking this question there.</p>
<p>this might answer some of your questions:</p>
<p>[FAQ</a> -*Office of the Dean of the College](<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/odoc/faculty/grading/faq/]FAQ”>Grading at Princeton | Office of the Dean of the College)</p>
<p>by the way, the sciences and engineering fields at Princeton were the least affected by the grade deflation policy…</p>
<p>many of the engineering classes, labs and projects, particularly ChE, result in significant cooperation between students…</p>
<p>My Daughter is a sophomore at Princeton. Like a majority of Princeton students, she had never received less than an “A” in her life. She saw a number of " Bs" her Freshman year, which I have heard is the hardest year. She is now receiving “As” and she had her choice of highly selective summer programs. She has never regretted her decision, Princeton is an amazing undergraduate experience. Based upon my Daughter’s experience, after the first year of “shock”, the grades appear to fall in line with what students experienced in High School, assuming they have the same study habits.</p>
<p>Thanks so much for the response. It is very helpful. I read through the FAQ on the website you referred to but it doesn’t answer the question of what kind of atmosphere the grading policy creates. In a recent article in The New York Times, it mentioned students not wanting to help one another with notes if someone was out sick because of the fear of helping another student who might be in the 35% who would get an A. Is this hyperbole or close to what the atmosphere at Princeton is like?</p>
<p>It is good to hear that the grading policy has less effect on the science/engineering area and that students do collaborate on those projects.</p>
<p>Thanks mommalis for your response. It helps to hear of a student who is presently at Princeton who is enjoying her undergraduate experience there and that she has no regrets for having chosen Princeton over other schools she was admitted to. As I said, it’s not the grades, per se, that concern me. While my S, like your D, has never gotten a B in high school, I don’t consider a B in college to be a terrible grade. It’s more the law of unintended consequences I worry about, meaning that the grading policy might address grade inflation but has also created a student body that lives in a state of perpetual anxiety over the “35” rule.</p>
<p>Should the issue of grade deflation factor into a decision about Princeton?</p>
<p>In my opinion, No. Grade deflation is mis-named. Grades have not changed much at Princeton in science, engineering, and math. During the 90’s universities starting increasing the grading curve. At Princeton the grades in science, engineering, and math did not change. The grades in Princeton humanities departments increased. The grade deflation policy has had the effect of lowering the grades in the humanities and has not had much affect on the grades in engineering.</p>
<p>I am concerned if the issue of grade deflation diminishes a collaborative atmosphere at Princeton.</p>
<p>Student compete more against their internal expectations than against other students. I received A’s in all of my high school subjects so I expected to get A’s at Princeton. Your son will also expect to do well. My engineering classmates were my friends, they were my lab partners, they were the friends that I asked for class notes if I was sick. </p>
<p>creates a cut throat atmosphere among the students. If Princeton has created a zero sum game when it comes to grades, then that has to diminish any sense of collaboration among the students. It would only be human nature.</p>
<p>Never saw it. Again, the grades in engineering have not changed much. Princeton students realize that grad school acceptance is dependent on GRE scores, independent work, and professor recommendations. The elite university grad schools understand the grading system at Princeton. Grad school acceptances have not been affected.</p>
<p>students not wanting to help one another with notes if someone was out sick because of the fear of helping another student who might be in the 35% who would get an A. Is this hyperbole or close to what the atmosphere at Princeton is like?</p>
<p>Never saw that.</p>
<p>Grade deflation has the effect of raising the class rank of science and engineering students relative to the hyper inflated grades of humanities students. The current grading policy is similar to Princeton’s grading policy prior to the 90’s. Just because some universities (perhaps a university named after a color) give mostly A’s to all students does not mean that is a good educational policy.</p>
<p>Find something else to worry about.</p>
<p>Neither of my kids has ever reported this. Anything but, really.</p>
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<p>hsseniorparent–I couldn’t find the article that said this, but in my experience (my daughter graduated in 2010 and many of her friends are still at the school), that is simply not the case. Grade deflation is definitely not popular, but most students at Princeton are truly collaborative and almost invariably kind, intelligent, interesting and absolutely love the school. In fact, my daughter and her friends are already planning to go back for reunions and are trying to see how big a turnout they can get. </p>
<p>And I have never heard a story about a student refusing to give notes etc. to another student.</p>
<p>Princeton kids are definitely collaborative.</p>
<p>That being said, if you are looking into a career in law, it is just a lie to say grade deflation isn’t going to hurt you. It will. Same goes for medical school, although the difference is probably reallly small.</p>
<p>It’s also easy to forget that the 35% “rule” (and its more a suggestion than a hard and fast rule) is a target for the entire department, not each individual class. Helping others in no way brings your grade down. Additionally, I have yet to hear of a department that doesn’t try to help out its upperclass students; typically, large classes like intro econ will give fewer A’s (and it looks like your son can take AP credit to skip out of intro chem and physics, which generally have fairly harsh curves) so that the econ department can give better grades to students in higher-level classes. As a result, most students’ departmental GPA’s hardly see the effects of grade deflation. </p>
<p>I will also add that I have never seen one student ask another for help on a problem set and not receive it unless the other was near a deadline for a paper or something.</p>
<p>This is the grading policy for the econ department:
“ECO 100, 101 30%
ECO 200 40%
ECO 202 30%
ECO 300, 301, 302 30%
ECO 310, 311, 312 40%
300 Level Electives 35%
400 Level Electives 50%”
(from a letter from the department chair)</p>
<p>These are strict maxima. Note that 400-level electives are really advanced courses that most econ majors only take 1 or 2 of.
“The percentages listed here are maxima, not targets. If the performance of the class
and the natural grade distribution do not warrant, for example, 50% A grades in a 400-
level course, the instructor should not elevate grades to achieve the percentage.”</p>
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<p>Fightthetide, thanks…this is really important to know</p>
<p>Most Princeton kids were at the top of their class, took lots of AP courses and most students work hard. Nobody going to Princeton thinks of themselves as “average” yet are surprised when they find out they are in the middle of the pack when they were expecting to be at the top. </p>
<p>Grade deflation turns many top students into “middle of the pack” students. How a student responds to that is key. Some say, “#$%& it, I work my hardest, my grades are my grades.” Some will step up, work harder than they have ever worked in their lives and have a miserable time in other aspects of college life. Some look for the easiest courses they can find and take a whole bunch of 'em whether they have an interest or not. Some take courses they effectively took in high school. These latter two strategies are a waste of that $50,000 per year you are paying.</p>
<p>But whatever the response, if you can’t handle being in the middle of the pack (even without knowing if you will be) pick a school where you will be happy while meeting your own objectives for a college experience. If you end up in the middle, you will have to deal with it, explain it, defend it for a long time to say nothing of the stress during college. It will impact graduate school admissions, job offers, and scholarship offers, deal with it. And if being in the middle is not your idea of a good time, maybe you need to pick a school where you are NOT likely to be in the middle.</p>
<p>The letter accompanying the transcript is supposed to “explain” grade deflation but few employers ever read it. Don’t think that being an “average” student at Princeton is better than being a “top” student at STATE U. An average student at Princeton is just average in the eyes of employers in my experience. Why should an employer select an everage Princeton student when they can select an above average one? How the student deals with being average from Princeton perhaps says more about their character than the actual number. Can your student meet that challenge?</p>
<p>Helping each other on problem sets sometimes gets hairy especially if problem sets are graded. Collaboration/cooperation is sometimes an Honor Code violation so be careful. This may influence some students interviewed about the notion of “helping each other.”</p>
<p>^Yikes; I was hoping that employers would understand the presence of grade deflation but I guess not…How about admissions into graduate schools? Do they take into account the difficulty of the school?
I don’t mind being in the middle pack, but I do care about my GPA…I figure the workload can’t be worse than MIT though, right? I’m doing either engineering or compsci.</p>
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<p>This is a bunch of BS, if you’re in economics, math, any of the sciences, any of the engineering classes, any class where you can be graded on a cruve, the 35% rule is usually strictly enforced. This is unless the department gives way fewer than 35% A’s in the intro classes so that they can give a few more A’s in the upper division courses.</p>
<p>For instance, I took general physics my freshman year and my grades were:
Midterm 1: significantly above average
Midterm 2: slightly above average
Midterm 3: significantly above average
Labs/homework: near perfect scores (which is average)
Final: average</p>
<p>So just estimating from the means and standard deviations on those exams, I was in the top ~40%-35%, which translated to a B since they give around ~25% A/A-'s in the intro physics courses.</p>
<p>I studied fairly hard for those tests, and I always liked physics (got a 5 on the AP Physics B, 800 on SAT physics).</p>
<p>vivi</p>
<p>I think that many of us Princeton parents (and in my case, I’m also an alumna) have differing views on grade deflation. I don’t like it, mainly because no other schools appear to have followed Princeton’s lead, but I don’t see it as a terrible concern or issue. I don’t want to put words in Tigermom’s mouth, but I believe that her child had difficulties in getting the job he/she wanted after graduation and she attributes this to grade deflation (and Tigermom, please forgive me if I have mischaracterized your position). By contrast, my D, whose GPA was not particularly wonderful, had 3 decent job offers in her senior year, and is extremely happy at the job she chose. Moreover, she, along with her friends, loved Princeton and feel extremely loyal and passionate about the school, the teachers, the opportunities, the student body–in fact, pretty much everything.</p>
<p>What are your aspirations and personality? If your identity is tied to being “the best”, who are you when you are not? If you aspire to going the Harvard Law or Stanford Medical, is anything less a failure? And how will you respond if you can’t meet these high aspirations? No matter what school you select, you are a whole person, not just a student…well…maybe not…there are some kids who are JUST students. But given that, you are competing with them just the same. Do you need to match them stroke for stroke? At what cost? Will you be happy if you fall short? Are there enough OTHER things about your school to keep you content?</p>
<p>I’ve counseled many highly motivated students with very high aspirations to go someplace where they can excell as a whole person (if they are whole people) and be able to say no matter what happens to their grades “I did my best. I always felt challenged. I grew up. I loved my school.” Make sure you can say when it’s all over, “I loved my college experience.” A memory of four years of stress and disappointment is a lousy outcome especially at $200,000 a pop. A happy student is a better student.</p>
<p>My kids had very similar grade experiences in college as those they had in high school. The only difference being that kids who got straight As in high school, when they take classes not in the their sweet spot, and if they don’t choose ‘guts,’ will get some Bs and B+s. </p>
<p>My daughter got a fantastic job, but she wasn’t going for investment banking or consulting, nor was she aiming for law school or med school. If your kids want to go into any of those areas, tell them to aim for As. Which will be somewhat more difficult to get at Princeton than at Harvard and Yale. On the other hand, I do not believe Princeton’s admitting statistics have changed at all.</p>
<p>By the way, both my kids have been happy as clams. They’ve taken different social and academic paths. The main thing to realize about Princeton is that it’s in the suburbs. That will have more impact than all the rest of this folderol.</p>
<p>Sorry for my tone, I suppose. But I’m coming to the end of college stuff, and I am here less, and I find I’m less concerned with having people like me and more concerned with telling the truth as I see it.</p>
<p>I honestly think that there has been so much publicity about grade deflation at Princeton (such as the articles that the OP cites) that it has earned the institution greater academic respect and a reputation as the most rigorous Ivy. That will mean something someday to all current students and future alums. Of course, there are still employers that won’t know/care about it, and it may be a disadvantage in a few specific cases, but overall the rigor should be a life-long source of pride for most graduates.</p>