WUSTL Grade Deflation?

For students worried about grade deflation at WashU, I got a post stating that the average GPA for the Fall 2018 semester was 3.52.

Is that really bad compared to other universities?

It’s claimed that WashU is a grade deflator, but 3.5 average GPA should not discourage students.

Average of 3.52 sounds pretty darn good. There are other schools who are more known for deflating: Princeton, MIT and UChicago come to mind.

@Hamurtle Where is the source for this? Also have they been easing the grade deflation recently?

@bobsaget2000 the WashU AD tweeted that the overall GPA for students was 3.52 while the overall GPA for athletes was a shade under 3.5 (3.49).

My kid’s current cumulative GPA is a shade under 3.75 and he says that there are kids he knows with a higher GPA.

I’m not sure whether grade deflation has eased but he takes classes with a lot of pre-meds and GPA is all important for that medical school slot.

@Hamurtle Congrats for your student? What is his major at WashU - will he pursue graduate school?

I did not know there were concerns with grading, i had heard that some like Stanford and even Harvard had reputations for being easy on grades - especially Stanford - and it does not seem to hurt their graduates to have that reputation. On the flip side I know that Stanford has had ongoing issues with student stress and has struggled responding to student mental health challenges - and sadly there have been recent suicides. I have no idea if they are worse than other high performing universities nor how WashU would compare.

Btw, what is “WashU AD” you referred to in your comment?

@lachhi AD is the Athletics Director at WashU. WashU sports teams generally have the highest average GPA in Division 3.

Even though WashU is considered a ‘grade deflator,’ especially in some premed required classes, my observation is that the students seem pretty happy.

My son is a double major-Biology/History with a CompSci minor in the Engineering School. So he has Plans A, B, and C.

@Hamurtle would you say that a 3.9-4.0 GPA at a state school is more competitive for med school than a 3.4-3.6 at WashU? I’ve seen WashU’s med school admissions statistics and it seems that they have high acceptances for people even in the 3.4-3.6 range. And if someone manages to get more than 3.7 at WashU I assume that’s very helpful for the top tier medical schools?

The 3.4-3.6 for med school could be misleading if the information does not distinguish between admissions to allopathic and osteopathic medical school.

3.7 for WashU premed is good but doesn’t necessarily guarantee that a student will be admitted to a Top-20 medical school.

@Hamurtle do medical schools acknowledge WashU’s rigor and take that account when they look at the GPA? Or does the high state school GPA take the cake for the most part?

@bobsaget2000 WashU makes that assertion on their website. But I still think that high GPA/MCAT with appropriate ECs work out in the end.

I don’t know the credibility of the following source but I found this list of average GPA’s. https://ripplematch.com/journal/article/the-top-20-universities-with-the-highest-average-gpas-84ef5edf/

From that list, it seems the graduates from the universities with the highest GPA’s (Brown, Stanford, Harvard) have not suffered - and it could be argued that their universities will benefit if their alumni have better outcomes because of the higher GPAs. Alumni that are better off and also have a positive perception of the institution are more likely to donate back to the institution.

As an aside, I was never asked for my university gpa by any employer and only ever reported my university gpa when applying to Grad school. Even then, it seemed like the Test scores and other experiences were more important although I am sure GPA mattered as well in applying to grad school.

Interesting about that list is that 3 schools considered as grade deflators, especially for premed are in the Top 20 of highest GPA (WashU, Johns Hopkins, Cornell). That doesn’t indicate anything since the average GPA per major is not factored in.

On average private universities have higher grades than public universities.

I think the tendency for higher grades at all universities will continue.

Higher grades used to be correlated with more selective schools - and all the top universities are becoming more selective - the argument would be 'its so hard to get in to this school that the students are super capable (better than students at ‘lesser’ schools) and therefore deserve higher grades.

Also the practice of students rating their professors discourages professors from being needlessly hard graders since it will impact their ratings.

Furthermore an increase in the number of students choosing to go to grad school will drive a tendency towards higher grades by both the students and the the Universities. Undergrads with plans for grad school will push for better grades and the University would not want to penalize their students’ ability to get into competitive grad schools.

Finally, universities in general will want to avoid overly traumatizing students with needlessly difficult grading - since it could increase stress to potentially unhealthy levels and might lead to incidents that generate a lot of negative publicity. Instead, universities will want their students to have good memories of their experience and good outcomes (ie good jobs) such that the alumni contribute back to the university endowment.

As mentioned the grades by major will vary within the same University and between different Universities. This can drive graduate schools to put more weight on Testing (MCAT, GMAT, GRE, LSAT) and other criteria to decide who to admit.

It is possible for there to be deflationary pressure on grades in majors that are oversubscribed at a University. For example, if too many students wanted to pursue the same major at a particular university and that University did not have the capacity to handle so many students in that major, then lower grading in the key entry level classes for that major could be used to thin out the pack. I suspect this would be temporary and not a longitudinal trend since it can be rather brutal on the students and universities will try to mitigate that by asking students upfront to indicate their areas of academic interest and likely majors during the application process.

For WashU, certain majors are infamous for weedouts. Biomedical Engineering is well known for weeding out students. One of my son’s WashU buddies is a BME major/premed and mentioned a freshman meeting where the Dean of Engineering pretty much stated that close to 2/3 of freshmen BMEs would end up in Olin Business School.

There was a CC poster who wrote that BME = ‘Business Major Eventually.’

I can confirm what @Hamurtle posted above for BME. I just finished my sophomore year as a BME major. My class started as ~145 people and is now down to 55 (not counting 3-2 and transfer students who joined our class later). Most of this is due to the intro class being really tough.

However, I will say that the professors in charge received a little backlash from the department for causing such a big drop in enrollment. Since my year, the difficulty of the intro class has decreased significantly. Open note exams and optional homework assignments are two positive changes that come to mind. There is still some weed-out, but not nearly as much (at least in the first semester).

People who really want to be in the major stay in the major. Generally, the people who get weeded out are those that ultimately would not enjoy the profession anyway, or are not passionate about the material. In this, I think the weed-out process is a positive thing, as it saves people from wasting several years on something they have little interest in.

I don’t know that there is necessarily grade deflation in the weed-out process. If I recall correctly, the intro BME class was ultimately curved up about 10%. That’s not grade deflation; that’s just a hard class.

My son is a WashU rising senior who plays football and is president of his fraternity. He is a computer science major and has a 3.95 GPA. Most of his friends have GPA’s over 3.5.

I should add we are from a very small rural school in Illinois that offers no AP classes, and he has still been very successful at Wash U. The college is SO supportive of academics. In fact, all engineering students are eligible to free tutoring.