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its said that Vanderbilt has grade deflation. A stat was released in the paper where it stated that the avg. GPA at Vandy was a 3.2 whereas at Harvard it was near 3.5
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<p>So what? Do you really think Harvard students are less than 10% smarter than Vandy students? Their SAT scores are certainly more than 10% higher on average.</p>
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SM = grade deflation
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<p>I have to agree with exigent. The notion that Stanford has grade deflation is highly highly dubious to me.</p>
<p>Average at NYU Stern=2.7
Average at Wharton=2.85 (or something like that)</p>
<p>It is said that a 3.4 at Wharton or a 3.6 at NYU Stern is worth more than a 4.0 from Harvard.</p>
<p>Grade deflation: Swarthmore, Tufts</p>
<p>wait wat is infaltion and deflation? is it for high school grades, or college grades? can someone explaine?</p>
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wait wat is infaltion and deflation? is it for high school grades, or college grades? can someone explaine?
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<p>Most people who talk about grade deflation/inflation aren't using any kind of actual measurement, which is why you shouldn't listen to most of the people who claim that a school either inflates or deflates GPAs. If you did want to come up with some kind of reasonable measure, you would probably want to look at the average GPA at the school relative to the incoming SAT and high school GPAs of the students there, then compare that correlation across different schools. Boalt Hall (Berkeley's law school) used to have a grid that evaluated the relative difficulty of various schools, although I think that only looked at the average GPAs relative to the LSAT scores.</p>
<p>according to gradeinflation.com, Harvards most recent avg gpa was 3.39. Considering the caliber of students that attend Harvard, that does not seem surprising or high to me.</p>
<p>Americanski haha get off my nuts man I never said anything about which schools students are smarter. Just putting some numbers out there</p>
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Boalt Hall (Berkeley's law school) used to have a grid that evaluated the relative difficulty of various schools, although I think that only looked at the average GPAs relative to the LSAT scores.
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<p>Well, actually, that chart wasn't JUST about the relative difficulty of schools. It also had to do with the preparedness that the students had for law school. </p>
<p>This is the chart you're talking about.</p>
<p>Take a gander at, say, MIT vs. Harvard. Harvard gets a higher rating in that chart. Yet I think even most Harvard students would concede that MIT is probably more difficult than Harvard is. The issue is that Harvard probably prepares you better for law school than MIT does, and that trumps the greater difficulty of MIT. </p>
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It is said that a 3.4 at Wharton or a 3.6 at NYU Stern is worth more than a 4.0 from Harvard.
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<p>Let's not overexaggerate, shall we? In the last 20 years, there have only been 2 people who have gotten straight A's at Harvard - and that happened to be a brother/sister combo, Kevin and Lisa Schwartz.</p>
<p>I have a very strong feeling that far far more than 2 people in the last 20 years got at least a 3.4 at Wharton or a 3.6 at Stern.</p>
<p>Good thing I graduated from a school that gets an upward adjustment. I mean, man I knew college seemed a lot harder for me than for some of my other friends who were going to different schools, but this just confirms it.</p>
<p>Good thing I graduated from a school that gets an upward adjustment. I mean, man I knew college seemed a lot harder for me than for some of my other friends who were going to different schools, but this just confirms it.</p>
<p>"Let's not overexaggerate, shall we? In the last 20 years, there have only been 2 people who have gotten straight A's at Harvard - and that happened to be a brother/sister combo, Kevin and Lisa Schwartz."</p>
<p>what percentages of Harvard students earn a 14+ on the GPA? 13+? 12+? if you want to graduate with honor, what GPA on the Harvard's 15 should you make? just curious.</p>
<p>go to <a href="http://www.gradeInflation.com%5B/url%5D">www.gradeInflation.com</a> if your school is not on the list, that means your school is either normal or having grade deflation. I want to make my correction, that out of the top HYPSM, only M has grade deflation; S = grade inflation.</p>
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what percentages of Harvard students earn a 14+ on the GPA? 13+? 12+? if you want to graduate with honor, what GPA on the Harvard's 15 should you make? just curious.
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<p>Look, I never said that Harvard wasn't grade inflated. I think we can all agree that it is. My point is not EXAGGERATE the grade inflation. Only a vanishingly small fraction of the class gets 4.0's.</p>
<p>Where grade inflation really comes into play is at the low end of the grading spectrum. The truth is, it's practically impossible to actually flunk out of HYPS, but it is actually very possible to flunk out of, say, MIT or Caltech. Hence, while it's actually not that easy to get an A at Harvard (and almost impossible to get straight A's), the truth is, as long as you do the work, the worst you will get is a C. However, there are other schools out there that will not hesitate for one minute to give you a D or an F. Heck, some schools actually seem to WANT to give out lots of F's.</p>
<p>still, nobody answered my question yet: "what percentages of Harvard students earn a 14+ on the GPA? 13+? 12+? if you want to graduate with honor, what GPA on the Harvard's 15 should you make? just curious."</p>
<p>I've heard UNC, Chapel Hill has grade deflation.</p>
<p>I've also heard that Princeton has turned it's grade inflation around, and now it is rather moderate.</p>
<p>I think your concern about grade inflation/deflation is an irrelevant one, particularly with respect to medical school. I was on the admissions committee of one of the top medical schools. We generally reviewed applicants from the same colleges in our subcommittee so we knew the grading patterns as well as the recommendation ratings of premed advisors/committees (who often used code words as best, outstanding, excellent, very good or other equivalents). It is to a given school's advantage to promote its best students to the best professional and graduate programs, to help ensure that future top students from the school will continually be admitted. Moreover, at the top medical schools, applicants from colleges and universities are often compared against students at their own schools. We want to know who are the very best candidates from a given school. Grade deflation can help distinguish among these students academically. Grade inflation is not as useful, and we thus will have to rely on the recommendations of the premed advisors and MCAT scores. Admission to med school is not just grades and scores though. We look at the total application. On the other hand, most schools do have some minimal cut-offs as there are too many applicants to process. Unlike undergraduate university admissions, most of us who serve on medical school admissions committees are volunteer faculty members. </p>
<p>I would imagine similar processes go on for law and business schools as well as graduate schools. Students who do reasonably well at schools with grade deflation are not at any disadvantage as their tough curriculum and grading patterns are well known to adcoms. I would advise students to pick their undergraduate college or university based on their academic interests and other relevant factors.</p>
<p>Well, I almost agree with Pmyen, perhaps for different reasons. I agree that it is crazy to choose a college based on perceived differences in grade inflation. But that is because there are not particularly large differences. If you actually look at the data on gradeinflation.com, you find that nearly all the elite colleges have average GPA's between a B+ and an A-. Nearly all of the action is in within this narrow range. If you go to the various colleges for more up to date information, the range is even tighter. So, rumors not withstanding, it is rarely true that grades are substantially higher at one college than at others of similar selctivity.</p>
<p>Even the example of Caltech and MIT (and throw in Harvey Mudd, and the other tech schools), fails to account for majors. When you look at these places, you are looking at students majoring almost exclusively in science, and largely in engineering and hard science. These areas have low grades everywhere. I don't think there is any reason for an individual to expect a higher GPA as an engineering major at Princeton or Harvard than at MIT. If someone has that data, please post it. When you compare the Ivies, for example, to the tech schools, remember that most people in the Ivies do not major in STEM fields. At some of the Ivies, less than 20% of the students are in STEM.</p>
<p>Now, none of the above addresses whether students at some schools work harder, on average, for their high grades. So, if for example the MIT students work much harder to end up between B+ and A-, then one would have a narrower college experience, with much more time spent in the library, but the same GPA.</p>
<p>I am not as comfortable with the notion that the professional schools have the level of knowledge of mean GPA across colleges that pmyen assumes. As noted, these are faculty members, not admissions professionals, and the colleges do not routinely provide the mean GPA for each course or for the student body as a whole. Therefore, I am not convinced that a B+ from Caltech is viewed as the same as an A- from Harvard, even given the same major and course selection.</p>
<p>So for professional school admissions, where gpa matters, look at whether the school will let you take courses in which you are likely to excel, and whether you will be happy there overall. Make sure that you will have time to do the things beyond coursework that will help your application -for medical school this is clinical experience or research. Try to avoid places where the workload will be so great that to maintain a competitive GPA you may have little time for anything else. Caltech seems to be an example of this, but I doubt there are many other examples.</p>
<p>Afan makes some good points. Although admissions committee members may not have all the mean GPAs by major of a given university available to them, I would say that we are familiar with grades in premed courses because every candidate from a given university submits them. In addition to any information provided by the schools, we know that in a typical cross-section of very good to outstanding students at a particular university, how many people are getting A's and B's in the required premed courses. In the hard sciences and engineering, it is recognized that top grades are difficult to attain anywhere. At Harvard, for instance, the mean grades of biochemistry courses will be lower than those in history courses, and this could potentially affect the overall GPAs of applicants majoring in biochemistry vs. history. This is taken into consideration when looking at applications from Harvard or other universities where this discrepancy occurs. Having said this, I would stress that med schools are looking for excellence in one's field of interest-so choose your major based on what you are excited about not on which will allow you to attain a better GPA. Excellence in a field also may be reflected in research, independent projects, inventions, presentations, etc. in addition to the classwork. Afan is correct about extracurriculars. I would say that a strong passionate interest and contribution in at least one non-academic endeavor is very helpful as it reveals something about who the individual is and also how well he/she manages time and priorities-a lifelong struggle in the practice of medicine. Also, other intangibles such as character, leadership, etc. are important and are reflected by students' outside interests.</p>