<p>Why are schools such as Berkeley, CalTech, MIT, etc. considered uber competitive while schools like Stanford, Harvard, Yale, etc. considered "easy" to get better grades? </p>
<p>What I'm trying to say is why are some schools so difficult to get good grades while other schools you can just relax. The schools I listed are awfully hard to get into but they differ very differently. Are Stanford, H and Y just more generous with giving out A's and B's? I would assume that all (or most) elite schools would have very competitive student bodies and as a result they would all have very stiff competition. </p>
<p>I assume that these schools use the bell curve for their grades so why would there be such differences ?</p>
<p>It is totally arbitrary. If you have a 3.5 gpa and the average is a 3.6 then a 3.5 isn’t very good. How you compare to others at your school is what matters. Some schools inflate there grades, Harvard is known for this. Maybe they do it so it looks better on paper. If you are at Harvard then your competition is already high, why enforce policies to give out lower grades when there are so many talented people? Some schools feel like they have to do it for some reason, I don’t know why.</p>
<p>Perhaps because CalTech and MIT are premier science/mathematics schools, and those types of majors tend to have less people capable of doing those subjects well as subjects that students might be studying at Harvard or Stanford?</p>