<p>Are there a lot of parties or is the social scene pretty dismal because of all the studying? In a lot of guide books, it says that people often study instead of party. Is this true? For the current students, are you glad you are attending Northwestern or would you rather have picked a similar school that is more fun? Thanks a lot. Oh, one final question to the current students: Is there grade deflation and if so, how deflated are the grades? Thanks a lot. I know some of these questions have been asked before, but I want to know if anything has changed and I would just like to see some fresh perspectives.</p>
<p>this pretty much answers the question...and i have to agree if you want to go out and have fun you definitely can...its easy to balance both studying and having fun</p>
<p>There's TONS of parties, all the time (Even during midterms, like now). But alot of people do stay in to study too. You kind of have to sometimes.</p>
<p>Ok, that's good to hear. Thanks for the answers. One more question (I didn't want to start a new thread for it), how many classes at NU are curved? Is it only the science courses? Is the curve pretty standard? Does it breed intense competition? Thanks a lot for your answers, I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>All classes are explicitly or implicitly curved. Most science and economics classes say, "the median grade for the midterm was a 59 (yes, this does happen), so 50-55 is a C, 55-60 is a C+, 60-65 is a B-.....". Other courses have test medians that tend to fall where they should...the B range. The professors know how hard their tests are and can get pretty close to getting the class average and grade distribution that they want.
As for grade deflation, the average GPA on campus is ~3.4. That's relatively high nationally, but other top schools (most notably Harvard) have GPAs that drift towards the 3.6 range.
Most entry-level classes are curved to a B- or C+ to "weed out" the kids that can't hack it. After that, the average grades drift higher in the 200 and 300 levels.</p>
<p>grade inflation also varies among different schools. WCAS/McCormick have the least inflation. Music school's average was 3.7 few years ago! So WCAS/McCormick's average is probably slightly lower than 3.4 while others are higher than that.</p>