<p>Certain colleges/universities are know for being academically brutal. i.e., B's are tough to get- A's are exceptional. I've heard Wake Forest is aka "Work Forest", Cornell U- grades on a curve and so does Davidson. </p>
<p>Any others?</p>
<p>Fordham seems to pride itself on its "hard-to-get-an-A" low grades.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd is very hard. There average GPA is 3.2, yet they are most likely the straight A students from your high school.</p>
<p>Swarthmore and Reed are famous for grade deflation--not on a curve, just insanely hard grading.</p>
<p>University of Chicago is known for its brutal grading. The freshman GPA hovers in the low to mid 2's.</p>
<p>MIT and JHU are only two institutions that I know of that have pass/fail grades first semester of freshman yr. to allow freshmans to get acclimated to the intense work environment. You get grades, its just that it doesn't appear on your transcript and it does not factor into your cumulative GPA.</p>
<p>Its no coincidence that these two schools, including Harvard rounded off the top 1,2,3 for highest suicide rates during the 1990's. ;)</p>
<p>There's a difference b/w grading on a curve and grade deflation. The two are not linked.</p>
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<p>^ What he is saying is that school that curve doesn't neccessarily mean they engage in grade inflation or deflation. It just means that they curve the grades. </p>
<p>Grade deflation is something to the likes of curving the average to a B-. That is, if you did average in the course, you get a B-. Some schools it like minus 20 points off the 90th percentile score will be the class average and the grades will be curved to that average. By that, you calibrate the 90th percentile score up as 100, that is if you break 90th percentile, you "ruin the curve" by increasing it up higher and higher. Something that JHU asians tend to do very well in. lol Or some classes have it such that they have certain percentage quotas for how many students can get an A/A-/B+/B/B-/C+/C/C- etc... There are some classes that schools that do not curve, you get the grade you deserve base purely on the scores that is outputed from your HW and test results.</p>
<p>I have one question, does toughness of the course curriculumn correlate to grade deflation? </p>
<p>I mean, tough obviously translate to lower grades but does one have to neccessarily be tough to hand out lower grades? Those that could have done perfectly well in a college course could be slapped with a lower than exception or desired grade just because the professor is a Dbag or that they just have a tendency or policy of not handing out those good grades like A's or w.e</p>
<p>Phead, Swarthmore also has a pass/fail first semester.</p>
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There are some classes that schools that do not curve, you get the grade you deserve base purely on the scores that is outputed from your HW and test results.
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But, of course, the grade you "deserve" is not necessarily higher than the grade you get from a curve.</p>
<p>I strongly preferred curved classes at MIT, because class average on tests was frequently in the 50-60% range, and sometimes even lower. Curving to the class average means most people get A's, B's, and C's rather than F's. (My husband took a test for which the class average was a 13, with a standard deviation of 14. Even people who got a 0 got a C.) </p>
<p>So MIT curves, and thankfully so.</p>
<p>It's all relative. Most math-science classes at most colleges are curved. But, don't let reputations fool you. Search the Cornell website and you'll find that their average graduating senior has a 3.3+.....So, IMO, a better question to ask is what is the mean gpa of a graduating senior, and not who curves.</p>
<p>I'm not sure there is such a thing as grade deflation anymore. Even UChicago has an average gpa approaching a 3.4.</p>
<p>edit: Maybe Reed though. Plus any engineering department.</p>
<p>Princeton .</p>
<p>^^ Bryn Mawr has an average 3.0 GPA, I believe. Also a reputation for being tough.</p>
<p>I agree with norcalguy, that curve, deflation, and also brutality are all separate issues. A school can curve with deflation or inflation or neither, and be easy or hard. E.g., Reed appears to curve and has no inflation or deflation (same 3.1 average campus GPA for over 20 years), and is academically tough (getting a B requires a lot of work, but it's also the most common grade). I also think it's mostly not a issue; grad schools know the grading policies of undergrad schools, and standardized tests (GRE, MCAT, LSAT, etc.) are just as important, if not more so.</p>
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University of Chicago is known for its brutal grading. The freshman GPA hovers in the low to mid 2's
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<p>That might have been true... twenty years ago, but I can promise you that's not true now.</p>
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Even UChicago has an average gpa approaching a 3.4.
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<p>Do you have a source for that? That approximation sounds about right to me, though my methods of determining average GPA for Chicago are about as speculative as anybody else's.</p>
<p>I can only speak from my own experiences at this "deflated" school: my grades are good, not great, because I'm a good, not great student. I never feel like the grade on the page is lower than the grade I deserve-- if anything, it's higher.</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd also has a pass/fail the first semester. If you get too many "High Passes" they send you a **get a life **letter.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input-- I googled grade deflation and BU is currently in a hornests nest of controversy regarding this.</p>