The comments suggest the grade distribution used samples from 7-14 years ago, so I expect the portion receiving A grades would be significantly higher today. Fears often do not correspond well to actual chance of outcomes. However, I doubt that many students were aware of the grade distributions of the respective classes when deciding where to take the class. I’d expect more common reasoning among students choosing to take classes at Santa Clara to be something along the lines of physics is hard, and classes at less selective colleges are easy; therefore I’ll have a better chance of an A if I take physics at Santa Clara.
Note that only a small minority of students chose to go this route at the time of the article, so it’s not a good representation of typical Stanford premeds. The vast majority of Stanford pre-meds instead choose to do their physics and other pre-med classes at Stanford.
An above-average student would likely get a better grade in a course with less rigor than in a course with more rigor. A Stanford student probably feels s/he would be more likely above average in a class at Santa Clara University than in a similar class at Stanford.
Top medical schools only require above-average intellect. The competitiveness of pre-med students is the result of their sheer number, not how good these students are.
Yes, even the most elementary physics class is among the most feared classes for many aspiring pre-med students.
Top medical schools only require above average intellect because the profession only requires above average intellect. Other skills that don’t necessarily correlate with academic/book “intelligence” are as important. If 1 in 10 of the “smartest” people become doctors, given that US-reared doctors are 1 in 200 of the MD-age population, out of necessity the pool would include the smartest 5% of the pool. Smart, but not ridiculously so.
I think most people would be surprised to know how little of the core non-clinical med school curriculum and the med school pre-reqs MDs need to know to be MDs. It is specialty and setting dependent, but it’s generally very little.
Whether a particular well qualified student is more/less likely to receive an A grade often depends more on how well the grade distribution corresponds to the quality of students/work done in the class, rather than level of rigor.
For example, some of the reviews of the Santa Clara course mention being curved to a B. Suppose the grade distribution was 20% A, 60% B, 20% C. If half the kids are Stanford students, that’s going to be a tough curve. The majority of Stanford students are not going to get A’s, regardless of how little rigor the class has. However, it would be far easier for a particular student to get an A, if the curve was adjusted to reflect the the larger portion of students doing A quality work, with the larger portion of Stanford students.
This relates to why the grade distribution tends to be higher in more rigorous courses, in which a larger portion of students do A quality work than in less rigorous classes, in which a smaller portion of students do A quality work. For example, ucbalumnus posted the Stanford grade distribution from 7-14 years ago in the less rigorous version of intro freshman physics. The corresponding grade distribution for the more rigorous intro freshman physics class is linked below. Note how much larger the portion who receive A grades is in the more rigorous Stanford class than the less rigorous Stanford class.
Unless a college offers classes with more or less uniform rigor, students tend to self-select to take classes that meet their requirement and they think they can do reasonably well in. Therefore, a more rigorous course tends to be taken by more capable students in the subject area. These same students, if they had chosen to take a less rigorous course in the same subject area, would have done better (i.e. gotten better grades). In other words, the two courses may have the same distribution of grades, but these students would more likely be on the right side of the distribution in a less rigorous course than in a more rigorous course. Course rigor does affect their grades, even if the courses have similar grade distributions.
The primary point has been the 2 courses do not have the same distribution of grades. Instead the distribution in grades is largely influenced by the the difference in student quality you mention. The class with the larger portion of highly capable top students tends to give a larger portion of students A grades.
The report at https://www.purdue.edu/senate/documents/meetings/Causes-and-Consequences-of-Purdue-Grade-Inflation.pdf lists the average grades at Purdue by course, field, and school. The overall average for engineering college among the 2008-2017 sample was 2.92, which increased to a little above 3.0 by the end of the sample. So I’d expect typical grades are more in the B range… perhaps increasing to B+ in more recent years.
However, engineering school includes a lot of upper level courses that only have high quality in-major kids, often with weaker kids filtered out. Such classes tend to have higher GPA than lower level classes. In the previously linked Stanford reports, some upper level engineering Stanford classes report literally 100% A+/A/A- grades, with no B grades. Looking specifically at lower level physics courses at Purdue, 3 courses are available, which are summarized below: The mean GPA looks like like the C+ / B- type range for these intro physics courses during this 2008-17 period.
PHYS 17200 - Modern Mechanics – Mean GPA = 2.48
PHYS 22000 - General Physics – Mean GPA = 2.36
PHYS 24100 - Electricity And Optics – Mean GPA = 2.55
Whether this means it is easier or harder to get an A than at Stanford or Santa Clara depends on the quality of students taking the class, and how large a portion are doing A quality work. The report mentions the overall average ACT of Purdue students was 24.0 in 2008, increasing to 26.5 in 2017. Purdue engineering would be notably higher Today the mean ACT for students admitted (enrolled is no doubt lower) to engineering is 32. However, more students than just engineering majors take Physics. So it is difficult to guess at how much higher the ACT would be for the students in the class. Using test scores as a proxy for student quality, this does indeed sound like a tough curve. I’d expect it to generally be more difficult for a particular well qualified student to receive A’s in intro physics at Purdue than at both Stanford and Santa Clara.
President Daniels was reportedly horrified by the “grade inflation” shown in that study and it’s one of his often stated goals to make sure that grade inflation doesn’t happen at Purdue. He talks about it ever year!
I can tell you for a fact that my D’s intro courses were all curved to a C/C+, including her honors courses where students had higher incoming GPAs/standardized scores.
One of her fundamental chem e courses junior year was re-scaled, AFTER the final exam, because the Dean felt that too many students got As. This course was not graded on a curve but on a point basis. (As you can imagine that didn’t go over well at all and there were tons of complaints but I don’t think the Dean backed down).
Average engineering GPA at Purdue is still below a 3.0.
Also, Purdue is large enough that the engineers take their own intro courses. There are very, very few non engineers in their classes, and students from other colleges are told not to take those sections. For example, my D’s organic chem courses were specifically for chem es. Pre-meds specifically are told not to take that class. Test questions and projects were industry based. It’s one of the things that D loves about Purdue.
If the median Purdue frosh engineering student earns C or C+ grades (2.0 to 2.3 GPA), that means that the 3.2 GPA needed for automatic admission to engineering majors is quite difficult to meet, so most frosh engineering students must go through a competitive admission process to get into their majors.
What do you all think of the comparison between a STEM class (non-engineering maybe) at a LAC versus a university? Our S is a math and physics double major at Bowdoin. Those classes are rigorous but small. There’s a lot of support. I do doubt that many kids get Cs because they really are doing A and B work, some with a lot of support from professors or older students. Is there anything wrong with that? The faculty want the kids to succeed and do the extra work to give them the chance to do so, as long as the student shows up for extra help. For one math class, our S was in that prof’s office twice a week on top of class time. The prof would talk to him privately about how college math is way different than high school math (this class was called Math Reasoning and is taken after the calc series and linear algebra). He told our S that it’s his job to help his students succeed and was enthusiastic about the subject and about students choosing to study math. He was inspiring.
When I was an engineering major at Northwestern, I got nothing like that in my math classes. For all three classes freshman year, I had a TA with a very heavy accent and spotty office hours. Same with chem (except those classes were way bigger than the math class). Medians on tests in chem and orgo were in the 40s. What’s the point of that? I’m sure a large percentage of us gave up. I still wonder if I would have graduated with a STEM degree if I had been somewhere where I had more options for support.
All this to say that maybe grades are higher at some top LACs or at colleges where “weeding out” isn’t a thing. It doesn’t always mean grade inflation. It can mean a higher level of teaching and support. To us, it was part of the value of Bowdoin. S19 likes math and science. I didn’t want him to give up on it after sitting in large lecture halls and being thrown to the wolves.
Not sure this is a “prestigious” college issue or an LAC versus university issue but, with all of the talk of grade inflation here, I thought I’d throw this info out there.
ECE, Aero, and BME are typically the three that are most competitive. Some years Chem E is in that mix too. It depends on the year.
BME was the most competitive when my D was transition to major because they were still growing the program and capped it at 100 students as they were hiring more faculty. They are the only major that has the caveat that if too many students hit the 3.2 threshold, they may look at course specific grades so the class sizes don’t get too large.
For the others, it’s the 3.2.
My D’s year chem e was not impacted and everyone in good standing was admitted. I will say they had more attrition from the major after sophomore year than usual. As you know, I think there is some value to having a secondary admission process.
So students who earn a 3.19 GPA or below are out of luck for ECE, aerospace, and chemical engineering, or is there space for some others based on a competitively determined threshold GPA between 2.00 and 3.19? For some reason, Purdue does not seem to be all that transparent about it on its transition to major web pages.
I agree that Purdue isn’t that transparent on their webpage. There was much more information and data shared during the engineering admission session.
So, if there is still room in the major after they take all the 3.2+ students, then yes, they will take the next most qualified kids.
There is also a “back door” way into the major. Students can elect to stay in “first year engineering” for an extra semester to get their GPAs up. They can still take the same classes they need for their preferred major and then re-apply for the major.
The other thing that lots of students do is transition to a similar, but less competitive, major. For examples, BMEs that don’t make the cut off will do mechanical or biological engineering instead and then their concentration in BME.
I think grade inflation is real. It’s just a matter of degree but is everywhere. It even exists, perhaps to a lesser degree, at a few colleges where most people (including most on CC) routinely regard as “the most rigorous” and “grade killers”. Grade inflation, like its economic cousin, is all about expectation. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
It is not clear to me how the study was done - since this is only mentioned in passing. But the data seems very obviously wrong. Elite colleges are the only places where consulting and investment banking firms hire from. I know a BA in English major get an offer from investment bank and another in art history get an offer from google. Bothe from Ivy League.
These recruiters will not trek to Arkansas State University.
I don’t have solid statistical analysis - but the fact that very smart and rich people have no compunction in dropping $300K to $400K on private, elite institutes should tell you something.
Also the fact that the majority of the executive teams of companies listed on their website have elite school degrees - undergrad or grad.
AEI has always been a little weird, right wing research outfit and I would like them to reveal the methodology of the analysis done. It goes against everything that a lot of the industry elites believe in.
if you are referring to the link in the first post, I believe they just looked at median earnings by college selectivity without any control for things like a measure of quality of students, or a measure of major / field of work. It’s important to control for such factors when comparing earnings, and other studies listed in the thread have done a much better job at this. It’s a lacking enough that I don’t think it’s even fair to call it a “study” – more of a poorly researched article.
A quick search on LinkedIn will show this is not accurate. As discussed throughout the thread, attending certain “elite” colleges can give students a significant advantage in hiring at certain “elite” finance and consulting companies. However, that doesn’t me that consulting and banking only hire from “elite” colleges.
I’m guessing the art history major didn’t get an offer for a software engineering type position. Tech companies hire primarily based on having desired experience and skill set, not based on the eliteness of college name. Many (most?) new grad tech positions require hires to have a specific list of majors related to the position. They also have a technical interview portion, which involves solving tech/programming questions that are relevant to the job position. They don’t just hire an art history major and expect him to pick up how to do software engineering on the job because he seems like a bright guy.
People also pay $300-$400k for many colleges that are not typically thought of as elite. For example, much of the recent discussion has compared the less selective Santa Clara to Stanford. One area where they are not particularly different is sticker price, as summarized below. The income distribution of parents also looks similar at Stanford and Santa Clara. Does the fact that many smart and rich people are willing to drop $300k to $400k on private, not as elite institutions like Santa Clara also tell you something?
Stanford – $55k tuition + $18k room and board + $5.5k other = $78,900 net price
Santa Clara – $55k tuition + $17k room and board + $5k other = $77,500 net price
In Chetty Study
Stanford – 39% of parents from top 5% income, 17% from top 1% income, 4% bottom 20%
Santa Clara – 44% of parents from top 5% income, 14% from top 1% income, 3% bottom 20%
Most majors are not at capacity. Only four out of fourteen potential engineering majors typically hit capacity.