<p>Highly selective schools like HYPM are full of students who are academically remarkable. Wouldn’t one logically expect the average GPA to be higher there vs. a less selective school if one is basing the grade on achievement vs. going for a bell curve?</p>
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<p>They are comparing across all levels of schools, and they took into account the SAT of the entering students. They normalized it.</p>
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Many studies are done like this, including some medical studies. This does not invalidate it. Frankly, I don’t think it is even talking about causation. By looking at how many people who smoked got cancers and heart disease researchers understood there was a link between smoking and many diseases before they every completely understood the mechanism. Almost every clinical trial looks for these types of data. The question is how do they control for other factors.</p>
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<p>Once again, this is across all levels of private and public schools. Some of the public schools are more selective than some of the private schools in the study.</p>
<p>And again, these top level schools have always been full of remarkable students.</p>
<p>I’m sure there are flaws with the study like every study, but that does not mean the methodology is poor.</p>
<p>There is the assertion here that students at a HYP-type school would get As at State U, and doubts that a Student at State U could get As at HYP.</p>
<p>I’m sure that many HYPs would be at the top of the class at Statue U, but the top of the class might be a deflated 3.5 rather than an A.</p>
<p>Conversely, let’s not forget the pygmalion effect in which students who are expected to do well, get better grades. In one study, teachers were presented with students of equal ability. Those labeled as superior got better grades than those labeled as average or deficient. Beyond this simple finding, it has been found that expectations of success, over time, yielded higher objective achievement.</p>
<p>“You’re at Harvard. Of course you deserve an A.”</p>
<p>I think one point here is that grading overall has powerful subjective aspects.</p>
<p>One study showed that neat handwriting gets higher grades than sloppy handwriting–even if the sloppy handwriting has more errors.</p>
<p>Another study demonstrated that even your name can affect your grade. The same paper written by the popularly named David or Jennifer received higher marks than when it bor the moniker, Boris or Olga.</p>
<p>There is a reason why auditioners for orchestras play behind a screen and their names and resumes are not known to the judges–otherwise Juilard alums would probably get jobs they didn’t deserve.</p>
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<p>I’m thinking you mean even if the neat handwriting has more errors?</p>
<p>At very selective schools (I could only speak for Cornell and MIT) a students grades are based on the mean of the class. When you consider that everyone in that class is high achieving you know you have worked very hard to have earned that A. The level of tests at these schools can not be compared with those of state schools either.</p>
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<p>Sure they can. You can go on MIT OCW and look at the tests and compare them to the tests in state schools. In EECS, MIT has eased the curriculum requirements for algorithms offering an easy track and a hard track - or practical vs theory. MIT has a lot going for it and we hire a fair number of students there but the kids there don’t walk on water. Well some of them do. I do recall interviewing a lady that did a double major and I looked at her courses and it was more like half a degree in this and half a degree in that where we wanted more depth in the majors that we were interested in. We do hire from selected state schools too that are known for excellence in niche areas.</p>
<p>I went to Chicago 2 decades ago. If that was grade inflation, I would hate to see my GPA had I gone to a State school. LOL.</p>
<p>^^^^ BCeagle
I have seen exams from Cornell and exams from MIT. They are closely matched for the same courses. I have also seen my fair share of a couple state school exams and there is a pretty big difference. That has been my experience, yours may be different.</p>
<p>Quote:
One study showed that neat handwriting gets higher grades than sloppy handwriting–even if the sloppy handwriting has more errors.</p>
<p>“I’m thinking you mean even if the neat handwriting has more errors?”</p>
<p>Sloppy thinking.</p>
<p>“I have also seen my fair share of a couple state school exams and there is a pretty big difference.”</p>
<p>That’s total hearsay. One piece of evidence would be to compare GRE subject scores.</p>
<p>And here’s one study, albeit comparing National Merit Finalists across different colleges: <a href=“APA PsycNet”>APA PsycNet;
<p>“The size of the college effects was small relative to the variability attributable to differences between students which existed before the students entered college.”</p>
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<p>MIT EECS is the most respected EECS program in the world, and it is also one of the toughest too. MIT revamped its EECS program from the batch 2010. It now teaches two compulsory algorithm based subjects 6.006 and 6.046 under the 6.3 option leading to B.S. computer science and engineering.
I’m not sure where are you getting the information about easy and hard tracks. The ‘L’ subject courses are there only for the GIR subjects and not for departmental major subjects.
You can check the problem sets (PSET) on the course website and do compare with your state university courses PSET.
Also please do talk to students at MIT about the time it takes to do these PSET before making any statement about state universities courses being equivalent.</p>
<p>^^^ParentofIvyhopeful</p>
<p>My sons at Cornell and MIT spend hours upon hours on problem sets. They each have a couple friends at state U’s that have math homework in classes with the same majors. There is a vast difference between the work load and exams at state vs. top 10 or 20.</p>
<p>I am not saying that there are not very intellegent kids at state schools I am just stating that there is a big difference in the level of work.</p>
<p>Most state schools are accepting a wide variety of SAT scores and GPA’s this will account for the difference in the level of work. It would be very difficult to give such a high level of work when there are students with average scores or average past performance.</p>
<p>momma-three: A simple proof of this is that at the top public UCB EECS you can bypass Math/Physics requirement by obtaining a 3 on AP test.</p>
<p>It will be uber hard for a student getting 3 on a AP Math/Physics to survive MIT Math/Physics courses.</p>
<p>Another hypothesis: State Us will make an extra-special effort to make sure that their courses are just as hard as the elites.</p>
<p>^^^
Not from what I have seen.</p>
<p>It is hilarious to me that somebody posts about a study showing, over a huge range of public and private schools, private schools have higher grade inflation. Then everybody immediately starts talking about top 10 to top 20 private schools vs lower tiered publics. That’s not in this study people. This is a very general study about publics versus privates, period.</p>
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<p>I work with many recent MIT grads. I was told this by someone that we hired from MIT a year or two ago. I was pretty surprised about it. This was in a lunch discussion at work. MIT isn’t perfect. MIT grads aren’t perfect. They are the beneficiaries of a stronger weeding process. But that doesn’t make perfection.</p>
<p>Here’s a question for you: would it be possible for a community college graduate to transfer to MIT?</p>
<p>Students at our state universities (PSU and UPitt) are advised to retake calc/chem/physics/biology even if they have gotten a 5 on their AP test, unless they have gone beyond what is taught in the AP courses or are extremely motivated. Honors classes at these schools, just like those at privates, are full of students who have gotten 5’s on AP exams - and some of these fall short of the curve anyway and will change majors or retake the class.</p>
<p>Students from the state university my son attended DO go on to grad school at MIT. These would (usually - but not always!) be students who entered college, however, with stats at the high end of MIT freshmen, who took honors courses and grad courses at the undergrad level, and who scored 800 on the math GRE (and usually not much less on the verbal section.)</p>
<p>BCEagle91: Judging the strength of EECS course by talking to one of the graduate of the course is not the correct way.</p>
<p>One particular graduate of public university EECS can have better knowledge or preparation than that of another particular student from MIT. </p>
<p>It is true that not every graduate of MIT is better than public university graduate. </p>
<p>But that won’t prove that the public university EECS is better than MIT EECS program.</p>
<p>You judge the strength of the program by looking at a group of graduate, and the course contents and problem sets and tests.</p>
<p>MIT EECS is the standard the EECS courses all over the world are compared against.</p>
<p>To be honest I can’t post on this thread any longer. If someone thinks there are state schools that give equal tests and work to Cornell and MIT than you will not be convinced by anyone. Some battles just aren’t worth arguing.</p>