Which is better: a 3.0 at HYPS or a 4.0 at a state school?

College Search & Selection
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<p>Well, I don't think that this discussion SHOULD be resistant to weak students. It is precisely the weak students that I tend to concentrate on the most. The way I see it is, you don't judge a school based on how the best students do. Obviously the best students at any school are going to do very well for themselves. Instead, you judge a school on how the worst students are doing. If even the bad students are doing OK for themselves, then that means that school is doing a good job of caring for its lower students, or simply not admitting truly bad students in the first place.</p>

<p>I'll give you an analogy. Imagine that in a room, we have 2 people who are extremely rich, and one person who is so poor that he can't afford to eat and so is starving to death. The 'median well-being' of the room is obviously quite high. But that doesn't adequately capture the suffering of the one guy who is doing badly.</p>

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<p>The median is looking at the middle 50%... which is exactly where people should look to see the actual performance at various schools. </p>

<p>Big public schools could care less about individual students, private schools have, well, more of an 'investment' in the student to do well - at least if they still want the tuition and absurd fees. I think we both agree on this. </p>

<p>However, that does NOT mean that private schools hand out grades, at whatever school one attends you should get what you earn, or a bit better depending on the curve ;)</p>

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<p>
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Big public schools could care less about individual students, private schools have, well, more of an 'investment' in the student to do well - at least if they still want the tuition and absurd fees. I think we both agree on this.

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<p>I partially agree with this. However, I would point out that I know people who actually find it CHEAPER to go to an elite private school than to go to a public school. That's because the private schools tend to be extremely aggressive in financial aid, to the point of giving full rides. Harvard has announced that they will guarantee full rides to anybody who makes less than 60k. Neither Berkeley nor any other state school that I am aware of will do that. I know people who got into both Berkeley and Harvard, and actually found Harvard to be cheaper, once financial aid was factored in. In fact, I will always remember one of them mordantly saying that it was always his dream to go to Berkeley, but he can't afford it so he has 'no choice' but to go to Harvard. </p>

<p>However in any case, when it comes to the notion of investing in students, that just signifies that you want to go to the school that will invest the most in you, provided that you can afford it. Hence, it's hard to imagine recommending Berkeley over Harvard (for undergrad) and it's really hard to do so if Harvard actually turns out to be cheaper than Berkeley once financial aid is factored in. </p>

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The median is looking at the middle 50%... which is exactly where people should look to see the actual performance at various schools.

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<p>See, this is I don't agree with, because it comes down to a matter of risk aversion. This has also been borne out by behavorial psychology studies - that people tend to justifiably choose something that is safe, meaning that they prefer a situation where even the worst-case scenario isn't that bad. For example, if I challenge you to a game of coin-flipping, and if you win, you get $1, and if you lose, you lose $1, then a lot of you might choose to play. But if the game is that if you win, you get $250k, but if you lose, you have to give me your house (presuming your house is worth 250k), then a lot of you will choose not to play. But hey, the expected value of each game is the same - in each game, the average result is to break even. So if you're willing to play game 1, why wouldn't you want to play game 2? The problem is that it gets down to risk aversion. People don't mind risking $1, but they do mind risking something big like their house. For most people, the possibility to win 250k is not as important as preventing the possibility that you might lose you house. </p>

<p>I think that's completely justified from a psychological standpoint because most people are highly risk averse in the sense that the possibility of winning big is not as important as reducing the chances of losing big. In fact, that's why people buy insurance (life insurance, property insurance, health insurance, etc.) because they don't want to risk losing big. In other words, to use econspeak, most people are willing to pay a premium to arbitrage away their risk. They're willing to pay fair market value, and then some. The entire insurance industry is based on this fact. If people were only willing to buy insurance at the market value, but no more, then there would be no opportunity for insurance companies to make a profit, and hence the entire insurance industry would collapse. It is precisely because people are willing to pay MORE than market value to reduce risk is why insurance companies make money. Otherwise, insurance companies would be doing nothing more than just shuffling money around (collecting money from the 'losers', paying money to the 'winners'), with no additional profit for themselves, which means that there is no reason for insurance companies to exist in the first place.</p>

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<p>Since Berkeley enrolls, on average, at the median, and at the lower percentiles, weaker students, the overall grades should be lower if the grading standards are comparable. </p>

<p>If you oversimply qualifications, and look only at SAT, the gap is huge. The average Stanford student would be in the top quartile of enrolled students at Berkeley. The average Berkeley student would be deep into the bottom quartile at Stanford. </p>

<p>Given the magnitude of the difference, it is remarkable that the grade distributions are as close as they turn out to be. They suggest easier standards at Berkeley than at Stanford.</p>

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<p>^Right, this was my point. If you want to look at how the weakest students are doing at each school, you need to realize how much weaker the bottom quartile is at Berkeley.</p>

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<p>Very roughly, the bottom quartile at Berkeley does not exist at Stanford. Again, looking only at SAT, these are people with SAT less than or equal to 590V, 630 math. This is a quarter of the class at Berkeley, and nearly non existent at Stanford. If you eliminate the bottom quartile at Berkeley, and look at the grades of everyone else, you begin to correct for the differences in student ability. </p>

<p>Eliminating the bottom 25% of grades of Berkeley gets rid of all the F's, all the D's, all the C's, and 30% of the B's. You end up will a college at which every single grade is a B (no B-) or better. 67% of the grades will be A's. Mean gpa would be 3.68. And the student body still would not be the equal of that at Stanford. (For example, Berkeley after elimination of the bottom quartile would have 1/3 of students with SAT Vat or above 710. At Stanford, considering all students, 2/3 have SAT V at or above 700).</p>

<p>This shows that Stanford has harder grading than does Berkeley.</p>

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<p>In response to the original question:
It's a ridiculous proposition, because a 3.0 at HYPS does not translate to a 4.0 at a state school. If you're somehow going to become dumber by going to HYPS, please God don't go.</p>

<p>A more realistic question (excluding Mich, Berkeley, and other top tier publics of course) would be whether a 3.75 HYPS or a 4.0 state school would be preferable.</p>

<p>[url=<a href="http://college.mychances.net/view/?id=20&app=college%5DNash%5B/url"&gt;http://college.mychances.net/view/?id=20&app=college]Nash[/url&lt;/a&gt;]&lt;/p>

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<p>Nash,</p>

<p>That is a far more reasonable question. The answer is probably "it depends", on whether you are applying for professional school or graduate school, what major, what courses you took, what your MCAT, LSAT, GRE scores are...</p>

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<p>Except for maybe Med school, I would say a 3.75 from HYPS would be far superior as both an accomplishment and for future prospects than a 4.0 from a state school. Otherwise, except for cost, why are students that could do either choosing HYPS?</p>

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<p>afan, i think you oversimplified it a bit. the bottom quarter of the pool will be underrepresented in harder fields like engineering, cs, business, etc.</p>

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<p>Gator,</p>

<p>Your are right. I said it was a rough estimate. One would need much more detail about the distribution of SAT scores and grades within schools and majors to do a more precise job.</p>

<p>Of course, Stanford has engineers and CS majors as well. Let's say that dropping the bottom of the Berkeley class omits people in gut majors, but retains essentially all of the engineers and cs majors. After doing that you might have a Berkeley class with a distribution of majors similar to Stanford, with all the engineers, and hard science majors. The comparison remains valid. </p>

<p>If you can find the distribution by school, by all means do a more detailed adjustment. The only place I have seen that provides that data is CMU.</p>

<p>The main point remains. If only 15% of grades are below a B at Berkeley and "grade inflated" elite privates, but Berkeley is composed of 25%, at least, students who would fall off the bottom of the distribution at these privates, then it is hard to claim that Berkeley has tougher grading standards. The data point in the opposite direction.</p>

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<p>I think this is a very good question so I'm going to B U M P</p>

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<p>
[quote]
If you oversimply qualifications, and look only at SAT, the gap is huge. The average Stanford student would be in the top quartile of enrolled students at Berkeley. The average Berkeley student would be deep into the bottom quartile at Stanford.

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<p>Tsk tsk. Your assumption is flawed on many levels. First, Berkeley doesn't emphasize SATs in its admissions policy because they are deemed by top administrators and adcoms to be too coachable. The fact that there is a strong correlation between SAT scores and family income is a tip-off. Richer families will have their children in expensive test prep classes years before their senior year in HS. That correlation is much stronger than the correlation between college GPAs with family income, which really means that if given the same opportunities (as they are in college), there is a similar level of aptitude across income levels.</p>

<p>Berkeley turns down a lot of SAT higher-scoring applicants in favor of students from lower incomes and with family hardship. Berkeley has 3 times the percentage of lower-income students as Stanford.</p>

<p>Second, Berkeley students have to work harder for the same grade. the academic environment is more competitive, more academically intense. This has a bearing on the quality of the output. Stanford has a lot of students who coast, because coasting will still get you Bs. There are many classes at Cal where if you coast you will be flunked or get a D or at best a C, regardless of your aptitude level. It's a matter of the complexity of the course material and the quality standards of the faculty, which is easily as good as Stanford's, across the board.</p>

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Very roughly, the bottom quartile at Berkeley does not exist at Stanford.

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<p>False. Something like what, 10% of Stanford students are student-athletes, and another 10-20% are aided by legacy matters. Not to mention URMs. At Cal, the % of student athletes is much smaller (we field fewer teams and our student body is much larger), and affirmative action is no longer used. It is harder to get into Cal as an OOS minority than into Stanford.</p>

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<p>CalX also didnt' mention that the SAT scores measured at stanford and Berkeley show two different things- how? Berkeley accepts only the best overall sitting, while Stanford accepts the best combined scores. Berkeely claism to do this because of some of the reasons CalX mentions, that poorer students are far more likely to only take the test once, that people are somewhat likely to improve on a second take, and that SAT II tests are supposed to be more indicative of college performance. Some students at Berkeley reported scores hundreds of points lower than their best combined as their scores because of this policy. How much this would affect the overall Berkeley sat I averages? Many on this site, such as Alexandre, guess 20-50 points, but nobody knows.</p>

<p>The breakdown of many cs, engineering, and math classes seem to be more friendly to students at Stanford than at Berkeley. There is a document on this website from one medium level stanford calc class over this past semester which shows 1/3 of the class receiving A+'s with the lowest score a lonely C-.</p>

<p>afan, you also assume that there is some sort of correlation between SAT I scores and grades in college coursework- do you have any proof of that claim?</p>

<p>Sakky, about liberal arts vs "marketable majors," do you think that where they want to work has anything to do with it? For instance, I know an engineering student at Berkeley who I overheard saying "volunteering one's time for free? Why would anybody do that?" Could you imagine him working for a non-profit? Do you think that someone in the liberal arts may be more willing to teach at a high school and sacrificing potentially better economic situations? Basically, do you think that willingness to work harder or more demanding jobs for potentially less money, or where people want to work, has something to do with the average pay for various majors? Perhaps at the least it's a function of demand (I believe this would play a part, but that there is more to it than just demand)?</p>

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<p>What assumptions? Again, I am just citing facts.</p>

<p>Berkeley places less emphasis on SAT's than does Stanford? Evidence would be helpful here, but admissions policies are beside the point. I was not making any assumptions about how they ended up there, just pointing out that, after all was said and done, Berkeley had a lower SAT distribution than Stanford. </p>

<p>SAT predicts college academic performance and Stanford's SAT's are much higher. Why SAT predicts academic performance also is beside the point. Family income predicts college performance and SAT. The point remains, for whatever hypothesized reason, Stanford has a stronger student body than does Berkeley.</p>

<p>Berkeley, being a state school, has lower income students than Stanford? Probably. Again facts would help, but beside the point. The issue is not their socioeconomic status, but their academic level. There is no evidence that SAT predicts academic performance in college differently for different socioeconomic groups.</p>

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False. Something like what, 10% of Stanford students are student-athletes, and another 10-20% are aided by legacy matters. Not to mention URMs.

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<p>Berkeley has these groups as well. Athletes, legacies, and URM's are included in the figures I cite. So, including these groups, Stanford has a higher SAT distribution. </p>

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Berkeley students have to work harder for the same grade.

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</p>

<p>Again, please cite your data source. I do not know of any data that would permit such a comparison. It would require either a survey of study habits of students at both schools, adjusted for entrance qualifications, or a detailed analysis of the course content- how many papers assigned, and how long? How many problem sets? How much material covered in each class?</p>

<p>This really is not that hard. Compare both the input (for aggregate comparisons, the SAT works pretty well as a proxy for academic level and family background) to output, in this case GPA. Simply comparing GPA without controlling for the student input is misleading. </p>

<p>If you do not like SAT for a comparison of student input, propose something else, but to try to compare GPA without adjusting for student academic ability is meaningless.</p>

<p>Also consider differences in outcome. Here is the famous list of top places in students receiving prestigious fellowships. Stanford is 4th, Berkeley is not on the top 10 list. Remember, this is number of fellowships, not percent of students. Since UCB is so much bigger this means the percent receiving these fellowships is much lower. Of course, this looks at the top of the student distribution, not the bottom, as does the rest of my discussion, but the difference is at least as stark.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.mediarelations.k-state.edu/WEB/News/NewsReleases/scholarsprivpub406.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.mediarelations.k-state.edu/WEB/News/NewsReleases/scholarsprivpub406.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Look, I am not denigrating UCB. It is one of the world's best universities. I am just asking you to look at real data, rather than rumor, in interpreting gpas.</p>

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<p>I didn't get a chance to read the entire discussion but I thought I'd throw this out there (don't know if it has been discussed)...I know that here at Penn some departments like engineering/wharton/etc. have lower grade averages somewhere in the high 2s (engineering)-low 3s (wharton) and most of these people end up getting outstanding jobs i.e. i-banks, consulting firms, microsoft, google, top fortune 500s, etc. For example, I know people in wharton with sub 3 gpas (like 2.8ish) who have gotten i-banking jobs. </p>

<p>So really depending on what you want to do lower grades at a top school (HYPS,etc.) might be better than a 4.0 at a state school because these schools open up more options for its students, even the mediocre ones. At state schools (with the exception of a few) very few people can actually land top banking/consulting jobs...even with a 4.0 their chances are slimmer. For grad schools its another story as many have minimum GPAs...</p>

<p>In general though grades don't really matter after your first job (even for your first job they don't matter too much)...it's more about the person. A person with a 4.0 with no personality,networking skills will not be successful no matter where they graduate from...while a person with a mediocre GPA,personality,networking skills,etc. will be more successful...hey if the average millionaire had a 4.0/1600 then most people would be screwed but in reality the average millionaire has a B- average and a sub 1300 SAT...</p>

<p>don't worry too much about grades...</p>

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<p>
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afan, you also assume that there is some sort of correlation between SAT I scores and grades in college coursework- do you have any proof of that claim?

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<p>Wow, Drab, I assumed everyone on CC was familiar with this. There is a huge literature on the subject, going back decades. A review of the literature would go to book length. For starters, you might look at "Black White Test Score Gap", by Jencks and Phillips and "Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education" by Bowen, et al. Both are books that contain original research as well as extensive reviews of the literature.</p>

<p>Once you read these, and a few of the largest studies they mention, which include hundresds of thousands of students at colleges across the country, you will find that no informed person questions whether SAT predicts college grades. The concern is that it does this largely or entirely due to the association between SAT and socioeconomic status, and people from higher SAS groups get better grades. Therefore, critics say that the SAT is unfair because it rewards students for being from high SAS families rather than for exceeding what would be expected from their backgrounds. However, even these critics do not, and cannot, deny that higher SAT scores predict higher grades. The only questions are why, and whether the effect is worth the SAS preference it builds into admissions.</p>

<p>bern, Yes, a more detailed look at grades vs input would take into account college majors. Hard sciences and engineering tend to have lower GPA's, I can cite the data if you want, but this is well established. Here UCB and Stanford are good comparisions, because both have a high proportion of physical science and engineering majors. Stanford actually grants ~37% of degrees in STEM fields, vs ~32% for Berkeley. So distribution into low-gpa majors cannot explain the gap.</p>

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<p>I'll look into it when I have more time, and as shocked as you are, I bet many have my view, or have no real proof (aka haven't read the reports) when thinking about a correlation between SAT I scores and GPA.</p>

<p>In your response to bern you do mention that science and engineering courses tend to give out lower grades, which is true, but does the trend really matter here, or rather what the science and engineering courses at the two particular schools in question do, as well as the the social science and humanities courses? It's quite possible that Stanford's grades in these coures are lower than Berkeley, but do you have that data, as I think it's more significant than the national trend.</p>

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<p>Nope, I haven't seen data for gpa by major at either of these schools. I have seen it for other elites, and it tracks as indicated, with science and engineering lower. I think that is useful, since we picked UCB and Stanford as illustrations of elite public and elite private institutions, not because there is anything uniquely interesting about these two places.</p>

<p>The SAT/grade prediction relationship is the reason so many colleges use it as part of the admissions process.</p>

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<p>
[quote]
Since Berkeley enrolls, on average, at the median, and at the lower percentiles, weaker students, the overall grades should be lower if the grading standards are comparable. </p>

<p>If you oversimply qualifications, and look only at SAT, the gap is huge. The average Stanford student would be in the top quartile of enrolled students at Berkeley. The average Berkeley student would be deep into the bottom quartile at Stanford. </p>

<p>Given the magnitude of the difference, it is remarkable that the grade distributions are as close as they turn out to be. They suggest easier standards at Berkeley than at Stanford.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Afan, you and I are talking about very different things. You're arguing about things on a macro level, I am talking about what happens on a micro level.</p>

<p>Let me explain. I agree with you that the average undergrad at Berkeley is not as good as the average undergrad at Stanford, and in particular, that the bad students at Berkeley tend to be the ones that get the really bad grades. Consequently, there are very very few bad students at Stanford that are comparable to the bad students at Berkeley. This I agree with.</p>

<p>However, I am talking about what happens to students on a more micro level. For example, an individual bad student at Stanford is treated far better than an individual bad student at Berkeley. I agree with you that it is obviously easier to get into Stanford than to get into Berkeley and that very few bad students get into Stanford. But what if you happen to be one of those (few) bad students who gets into Stanford - i.e. by legacy admissions, or through AA, or because of sports recruiting, or because your daddy donated a huge pot of money, or because you're the son of European royalty, or whatever it is? </p>

<p>I would argue that if that is you, then you should probably prefer Stanford to Berkeley. Why? Because the Stanford grading will be easier. Why is that? Because, like I said, practically nobody at Stanford ever actually flunks out. If you're a bad student at Stanford, you're probably going to get C's. Those aren't good grades, but at least they're passing, and you're going to be able to get your degree. However, if you're a bad student at Berkeley, then you're going to flunk out. </p>

<p>So in that sense, the grading at Stanford is actually EASIER. It is true that on a macro level, the grading at Stanford may not be easier because, as you said, there are far more bad students getting into Berkeley than into Stanford. However, on a micro level, if you happen to be one of those few bad students who happens to get into Stanford, then it is easier. </p>

<p>And that ties into my discussion of risk aversion. The fact is, nobody ever wants to believe that they are going to be a bad student. Nobody believes that they are going to get the worst grade of anybody in a particular class. Yet the fact is, somebody has to be the worst student in any class. However, if you're the worst student in any class at Stanford, you're probably unlikely to get anything worse than a C, and that's good enough to pass. Get straight C's at Stanford and you will graduate. But at Berkeley, if you take a class, and you're the worst student, you could very easily wind up with an F. Hence, the risk-averse move is to go to Stanford, because you never really know if you're going to end up in classes where you're the worst.</p>