<p>I don't know if that made sense but I was talking to my mom and she pointed out that big research universities with D1 sports teams and/or awesome grad programs have a lot of prestige but aren't necessarily any higher quality (academically) or even harder than smaller, lesser-known private colleges. Can you think of any two undergrad schools that are of equal (approximate) difficulty academically but where one is just more prestigious/well-known and therefore receives way more applicants and competition for admittance?</p>
<p>There is some kind of a list that someone does with schools where, “Students Never Study”. I was always surprised to see Univ of Texas-Austin on that list.</p>
<p>Basically grade inflation is rampant in a lot of top IVY League schools: HYP!</p>
<p>NOT Princeton.</p>
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<p>Even if A’s were 60% of the grades given out at a place like Harvard, the bottom 25th percentile of students is still more apt than the top 25% of most schools and so what you call “grade inflation” is still stiffer competition than competing with the top 20-30% for an A at most other schools.</p>
<p>Well its inflation taking into consideration schools like MIT, Caltech, and Johns Hopkins–the candidates are just as much competitive/qualified but its just increasingly harder to get an A. </p>
<p>Case-in-Point: My cousin transferred from Johns Hopkins [Physics Major] to Harvard [Physics]. I saw him work his butt off at JHU, he wasn’t happy ever because he always had his head buried in the books, and he barely scraped a 3.7 GPA. Now at Harvard, he’s always at some frat or doing complete nonsensical things and he’s getting 3.9-4.0 each semester taking equivalent credit loads. </p>
<p>Basically the point is that getting into Harvard is much harder than doing well there!</p>
<p>Relative to how hard admission is, Harvard.</p>
<p>Way to go to completely miss his question, people. :rolleyes:</p>
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Wake (“Work”) Forest and UNC are roughly the same in difficulty, with the latter being considerably more well-known.</p>
<p>From what I’ve heard, the academic rigor at places like Northwestern, UPenn, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, Michigan, UVa, Vanderbilt, Emory and Notre Dame is not as hard as their admissions system.</p>
<p>basically, all top ten schools minus princeton, MIT and uchi. penn is competitive though.</p>
<p>An adage regarding the top LACs (AWS), goes along the lines of “The hard part is getting in.” Essentially, the same principle that may apply to Harvard.</p>
<p>Brown, with an average GPA of about 3.7.</p>
<p>ya brown definitely</p>
<p>how about for pre meds?</p>
<p>The Ivy League</p>
<p>Its not that simple. It depends, for example on your goals and objectives. You can skate at most schools and do roughly 3.0 work without too much difficulty. But to get into the upper echelon 3.7 to 4.0 Magna Cum Laude and Summa Cum Laude, you have to work very hard and very consistently at most schools. Some of the super elites are harder to get into than the actual workload and some of them have famous grade inflation. Still yet a lot of the second tier schools (below top 20) are infamous for being slave drivers with serious grade deflation, but they are wonderful preparation for graduate study, med school or law school. I do know that the work load and the campus culture of how much people study vs. relax/party/involvement in clubs or “causes” varies a great deal from school to school. </p>
<p>Finally, there will always be some kids who work like dogs…but still get B’s. While others who seem to sleep through class who get A’s. Some kids are just excellent exam takers and can write a paper very well. </p>
<p>The important thing is never to equate your self worth with your net worth or your gpa. Evaluate your worth with your work ethic, personal ethics and how much you get out of your school work, irrespective of your gpa. In other words, it may be an official 3.0, but its a 4.0 to you in your heart.</p>
<p>^ Very insightful post… more applicants need to realize that there is no easy way to personal goals.</p>