<p>When S1 recently was given a very good job offer (first job after college) he was not asked for his GPA nor did he provide it. He eventually asked if he should provide it, he was told they have found it meaningless, so no don’t bother. So much for GPA concerns.</p>
<p>If grade inflation does exist as a uniform trend across private schools, then why doesn’t it exist at public schools too? If it truly is grade inflation, then it occurs as a result of faculty/administration practices or policies and should have nothing to do with the students’ actual performance. What would prevent the faculty at public universities from doing the same thing?</p>
<p>Interestingly, there is another thread on this forum where posters have implied that grade inflation (as a result of grading on a curve) is done in a state flagship because the students at large state U’s are lacking in work ethic, complain about having too much work, etc.</p>
<p>^^^^
exactly!</p>
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<p>Nothing prevents public universities from doing the same thing. The degree to which grade inflation exists varies from institution to institution.</p>
<p>I think that students don’t like to get Cs. But if there was no grade inflation then that is what the average grade would be. I don’t think I have ever been in a class anywhere where the average student really received a C. Typically average work earned a B but technically that is grade inflation.</p>
<p>Apart from the apples and oranges nature of these comparisons, I haven’t noticed (I read the thread quickly, so I admit I could have missed it) any mention of two difference that have an enormous impact on how well students do:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The quality of the faculty - all schools have “stars”, but one thing that tuition can, and often does, buy is quality faculty across the board, and</p></li>
<li><p>The greater academic support that the privates give their students. In my experience, unless you’re in a specialized program/major, the privates work harder to help their students succeed.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I feel like this thread is just designed to provoke people who are unable to go to ‘elite privates’ and ‘have to settle’ for a public instead.</p>
<p>Public universities have a wider range in terms of SAT admissions than the higher performing private schools. You can’t see this in the average scores as the outliers from both ends of the spectrum cancel each other out. For example, I know kids have been admitted to our state flagship with SATs in the high 1400s (but were top student at their high school). Why were they admitted? State schools have a mission to serve the most deserving kids and will admit kids from rural schools with limited educational opportunities and poor preparation. These kids struggle during the first two years until they catch up. This effect can pull the whole GPA average down for an entire group. It is interesting that I could find no data on the range of GPAs and backgrounds of the students at the state flagship. Here is where I have trouble with the article-“averages” can hide a lot of important data.</p>
<p>Another effect mentioned by an earlier poster is that kids performing poorly at private schools tend to leave. They loose their scholarships or their parents refuse to continue with the poor investment. This effect can skew data as well.</p>
<p>I agree with serafina, the article was designed to stir folks up. It has served its purpose. Look how many of us fell into the trap.</p>
<p>
Once again, assuming this is true across all levels of school (which may or may not be true), are these things new? Did these things only become true after 1980? Because the whole point of the study is that the disparity in grading has gotten greater over the last several years. Can you point to the year the two things you wrote became true?</li>
</ol>
<p>People continue to post about all sorts of supposed differences between public and private schools that have mainly ALWAYS been true. The point is, why has the difference in GPA only become so pronounced in the last few years.</p>
<p>It still appears to me, that most people reading this infer
“elite private” when they read the word “private.” There are huge differences between different private schools and between differenmt public schools.</p>
<p>More people of a wider range of abilities and preparation attend college today than they did in the 1960s. Many kids that would not have been able to attend college in the 1960s (due to preparation and money) can now attend publics. The pools of students at top privates and flagship U’s have become more divergent over time. Aside from athletes, it is very difficult for anything but a stellar poor kid to be able to attend a top private. State U’s have a wider range of students. There are amazing brilliant students in honors programs and on full rides at flagship state schools but there is a lower percentage of them in the total population when compared to top private schools. I will look for data on admitted student profiles because I think this is at the heart of the trend-who’s going to the colleges and what are their backgrounds.</p>
<p>
First of all, we are not talking about only top schools.<br>
Increased access means, if anything, less qualified students are going to school (remember, across the board, get the thought of Harvard out of your head - we’re talking about schools, public and private, at all levels). That means grades should remain the same or go down. This study is about all types of schools, including selective public schools, and non-selective private schools.</p>
<p>My kid is not what you would call an academic superstar. He would be lucky to get into a CSU school, and probably couldn’t. But I know there are private schools that would take him if I were willing to pay full-freight. Yale is not one of them. That’s all this study is talking about - generic public, verses generic private. Which is why the study is not particularly useful, but also why people should stop reading things into it and taking it personally.</p>
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<p>I’m surprised there wasn’t a stampede to the Registrar’s office to drop the class (if it’s a required class there would be other profs teaching it right?).</p>
<p>But when you pay $50k in tuition, room and board, A’s become an entitlement.</p>
<p>By the way - many public schools have also become significantly more selective over time. I think Berkely has an acceptance rate in the 20%s. In the 1980s I think it was in the 70%s. Harvard has dropped form around 15% to 6 or 7%.</p>
<p>Really it’s no difference than what happens all across the country in high schools. GPAs are not created equal. Does that mean a 3.75 at UofM is the same as a 3.75 at Amherst or that a 3.75 at AMherst is less valuable than a 3.75 at UofM or a 3.75 at Amherst is greater than a 3.75 at UofM? Who knows and really what difference does it make? Graduate programs clearly know whether students are qualified or not historically from a range of colleges and universities and can take the GPAs in context coupled with GMAT, LSAT, and all the other standardized graduates tests. That said I can step back and see many motivating factors that would incline colleges with smaller populations to keep their students happy and returning every year that publics may not contend with because of the larger student populations, entering junior classes transferring from CCs etc. In the long run, though, the GPA averages are not terribly relevant.</p>
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<p>When I graduated from nursing school, the shortage was all we heard about. Everyone from my graduating class got jobs immediately, no matter their gpa. However, the desirable postgrad internships did have GPA requirements. These were usually the critical care internships where you spent several months training in the various ICU’s (NICU had its own hard core internship) and were placed in one of them at the end of the program. Since I wanted to do ICU, my GPA was quite important. I would bet that in most professions, GPA would only be something offered up by the candidate on the resume.</p>
<p>Second what momofthreeboys said. You can’t compare grades between institutions, they only have meaning within the institution they are given because then you take out the unknown of how much grade inflation exists in an institution.</p>
<p>Just to illustrate the point you can’t compare grades given in Europe with grades given here because in Europe the grading scale is modeled closer to a true bell shaped curve with a C being the average. I had a conversation with a professor once who was from Europe. She said the first semester she taught here she assigned grades on a standard bell shaped curve like they did in Europe. She almost had a riot on her hands and she never did that again. When in Rome …</p>
<p>
True, but completely irrelevant to the issue. </p>
<p>Here, let me calm some people down - a 3.0 at Harvard is likely more impresive than a 3.8 at typical state U. Does that calm everybody’s frayed nerves.</p>
<p>But a 3.5 at Harvard, or anywhere else, is more impressive when only 10% of the class attains it, than it is when over 50% of the class attains it. That’s the whole point.</p>
<p>If anybody were to look at the study (which isn’t perfect by any means but is not horrible) they would see that the author (a prof at Duke, one of everybody’s beloved private schools) has made some effort to control the variables. One interesting thing you might see is that at primarily tech schools, like Harvey Mudd or MIT, the average GPA has not increased as much over time. Possibly because the grading is more objective.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure I agree with this. A 3.8 from a state university if you have a tough major would be really hard to get. If you are on the pre-med track it would be very difficult. State Universities do not inflate grades. A 3.0 from Harvard is actually kind of low because they inflate grades by so much.</p>
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<p>Of course. I must be totally missing the point.</p>
<p>The article is a bit thin and just doesn’t seem very credible. And some of the conclusions are a little suspect; Med School Admissions is “fooled” by higher GPAs at private schools? I seriously doubt that. I would also believe that any study that covers the last 50 years would have identified a surge in grade inflation in the mid to late sixties due to the draft. I’ve always heard that grading practices before Viet Nam, during the draft and after were quite different. This study looks like someone just ran a bunch of queries against a database they didn’t understand well.</p>
<p>Well, shut my mouth, it does pick up the Viet Nam surge:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.gradeinflation.com/tcr2010grading.pdf[/url]”>http://www.gradeinflation.com/tcr2010grading.pdf</a></p>