<p>Cornell may not be good if you are going on to a professional school because of their grading policies and the low admit data from the wall street journal chart, but it is still an excellent school, even if the grading is very deflated compared to other ivy league colleges. There are many, many successful people who went to cornell and the Sun said today that contributions are up.</p>
<p>Unlike some schools Cornell gives 4.3 GPA points for an A+. Therefore it’s possible to regain a 4.0 if you lose it, by doing extremely well later on. However, I don’t know if you’re supposed to convert these back to 4.0 when calculating your GPA. I’m guessing you don’t since that would be tedious.</p>
<p>^
Not all classes give a 4.3 for an A+.</p>
<p>Cornell GPAs are out of 4.0 not 4.3. Technically some classes do give out 4.3’s, but it’s not consistent.</p>
<p>Forget about grading technicalities, with the information in this thread , is there anyone who could seriously consider cornell for preprofessional? Not me. Definitely a great, maybe one of the best all around Universities that we have, but sucky stats for undergrads who want to go to professional school. Cornell should try and improve the data, but I don’t know how they can do it without big changes . . . .</p>
<p>^
I would have to concur with that.</p>
<p>I am officially in hell. Suddenly, being back in high school actually sounds much, much more preferable to where I am now. I am completely miserable here. I don’t know what else could go wrong. Lowest point in my happiness levels in at least six months. </p>
<p>I was going to put $1,500 on Obama on Intrade, but now I’m not going to do that because he will probably lose if I do that. Will be totally consistent with the rest of my luck right now. </p>
<p>I hate to sympathy bait, but seriously. What did I do to deserve this? I worked hard in high school just to earn the right to be miserable in college. I need to find some grade inflated party school where everyone is nice to one another. Hell, even Community College sounds like an upgrade at this point</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>hmm, not sure if you’re ■■■■■■■■ or not. 10 days ago…
</p>
<p>^
Things turned around fast.</p>
<p>ah, you were the one posting in the investment banking career thread. If you think being a government major with an econ class is roller coaster ride…</p>
<p>^
Wait, how could it possibly get worse?</p>
<p>Maybe you should not reconsider a career in IB.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>yup.</p>
<p>I meant to say reconsider a career in IB.</p>
<p>Cornell truly need to adjust their grading policies. If I remembered correctly, Saugus is the valedictorian in his high school class of ?hundres and had 2300+ SAT. I have no doubt students who are motivated in high school are still motivated in college. There is no need to touture them.</p>
<p>Worse than Saugus’ college is College of Engineering. Though my daughter on CoE Dean’s List with a very respectable CoE GPA she is discouraged and decided not to apply for graduate school. (note my D’s IQ is 156, 99.98 percentile) I am positive there are many more bright students who were so beat up that their plan of going into professional path is eliminated.</p>
<p>Cornell may not know the problem before, and with good intention they might think hard grading system is good for the students. But these years, with so much information from internet the administration should know about the problem and why their students are stressed, with low self-esteem, and not going to give after they leave school.</p>
<p>I have to ask, with professional schools not considering undergraduate grading practice, does the hard trained Cornell students trumph the less trained Harvard, Brown, Yale students? Is it ‘necessary’ to treat students this way? (in terms of intelligence and work ethic, I would say many Cornell students are above these other schools’ students. Why do they need to discourage them?)</p>
<p>And people are saying CoE’s slectivity is the lowest among the seven colleges… it is not hard to figure out that applicants are very very self selective. (though they have the highest admit rate, they also have the highest enrolled SAT scores) If more applicants are not scared away by all these difficult grading, …etc. student experience, I have no doubt there would be many many more applicants and the selectivity will be different overall for the whole school. </p>
<p>Change grading system seems to be able to gain multiple benefits to me - happier students, lower admit rates, more endowments, higher professional feeding rate…why wouldn’t Cornell try it is beyond me.</p>
<p>^
The whole process of comparing educations, admissions, etc. just seems so absurd right now. Who cares past a certain point? My God, I almost want a WORSE education so I would have less stress.</p>
<p>Look, I’m not at the dregs or anything. In my three non freshman writing seminar classes, I’ve been either slightly above or slightly below the median. I have an ‘A’ in the FWS. </p>
<p>So you know, it’s not like I’m failing or something. It’s just… weird to be getting 'C’s or ‘B+’ on something which would have easily been an ‘A’ in high school.</p>
<p>^ I know, Saugus, from other thread it seems you are doing fine with projected 3.5 or no lower than 3.3 which is all good. It is still shocking for students who had 4.75 (or that level) in high school. I totally understand.</p>
<p>Is the idea here there should be more As? There are students getting As, right? Just not everyone. </p>
<p>My younger daughter had 800 in writing and often got A or A+ on her paper in high school. She was upset when she got a B on her first philosophy paper, but she wasn’t shocked. I think she will do better as time goes on. She just turned in her second paper, and she thinks it is a better paper than the first one.</p>
<p>Saugus - the point is this is not high school, college should be harder than high school.</p>
<p>Say if Cornell change it so that first year students with lower level classes will get about 3.7 GPA, (assume they are GPA 4.5 high school graduates) and then warned that higher level classes are going to get tougher on grading so that they work harder and get 3.5, 3.6 or higher at the end, it may work better for most students. Not exactly on the numbers, just a concept.</p>
<p>There should be more A’s.</p>
<p>^^
Well, I should clarify. My MicroEcon class is a 3000 level one and supposedly either the toughest or second toughest one I’ll take in my whole time here. Straddling C+ to B- in it, hoping to get a solid ‘B’.</p>
<p>The prelim I just tanked was from Gov 3082.</p>
<p>The prelim I thought I got an A+ on but wound up getting an 88 on was Introduction to International Relations. I went 29/30 on the hard facts, short answer parts. In the essay applying that knowledge, I got a 59/70, which surprised me greatly. The mean was an 84.9; median was an 85.</p>