Grade Inflation

[A-19]

I am disturbed yet unsurprised to report to you from my personal experience that grade inflation is alive and well at Harvard graduate school. Though I do not have the actual distribution of scores in all cases, take a look at the assignment of letter grades based on the Dean's recommended grade distribution:

ECON (out of 90)
A (15 percent): >=81 points
A- (25 percent): >=73 and < 81
B+ (35 percent): >=61 and <73
B (20 percent): >=39 & <61
Less than B: (5 percent): <39 points
Mean: 67.4 (out of 90 points)
Median: 68.5
Final course grades also curved.
*What does "less than a B" mean? B-? C?
*Why do 95% of students receive a B or greater?

BUDGETS (out of 100)
97 -100 A
90 - 96 A-
78 - 89 B+
65 - 77 B
50 - 64 B-
40 - 49 C+
20 - 39 C
Final course grades also curved.
*How is a 20/100 a C?

STATS (out of 80)
70-80 A
60-69 A-
50-59 B+
36-49 B
30-35 B-
20-30 C
Mean = 53, Median = 56, St.Dev. = 13
Final course grades also curved.
*And the test was an embarrassment to higher education.
*Knowing that ~95% of people fall within 3 standard deviations of the mean...

As a result, it's pretty clear that the school wants to prevent job differentiation by grades. Given that the school will not change its goal (a whole different beef of mine), I am working with several students to move towards a high pass-pass-fail system in order to improve the education system here just a little bit.

-Mike '04

[KeithK]

From my experience in grad school (at Cornell) and talking with others it seems that this is a common thing in graduate schools.  Everyone is expected to get A's and B's.  The assumption is that everyone in graduate programs are top students and should be earning good grades. A C is pretty much equivalent to academic probation. Contrast this to undergrad at Cornell where the mean student gets a B- or C+ in many classes.

In general I don't have a problem with this.  Especially when you remember that grad school grades aren't really all that important - the degree will carry more weight than the GPA.

BTW - I'm talking about MS/PhD programs.  I don't have much experience with  professional grad programs (MBA, MD, JD).

[beanmaestro]

Most of the grad schools I'm familiar with run on a similar (or easier) scale.  Frankly, a low B+ average is fairly harsh if the program requires a 3.3 (as did mine) or 3.5 (as did my wife's) average to complete the Ph.D.  UC Santa Barbara's ECE Department has one professor who insists on grading grad classes on a C average, and it completely fouls up the system.  They'd do something about it, but he founded the department, is a Nobel laureate, and is almost retired anyway...

[Greg Berge]

If you get a solid "B" in graduate school, they are telling you to find another line of work.  This is not restricted to Harvard by any means.

Having said which... Harvard still sucks.

[ugarte]

A lot of grants and scholarships are tied to maintaining a GPA above B. A B- in grad school is like failing.

[Shorts]

As I've been looking for jobs in Engineering, a lot of companies list in the "Qualifications" section a minimum GPA of 3.0 for BS candidates, or 3.5 for Masters candidates.  I'd been wondering why someone with more education would also need a higher GPA.  I guess that explains it.

[min]

it appears that grade inflation has found its way to cornell [gasp!]. see this unfortunate news tidbit from the atlantic (go to the middle of the page):

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200506/primarysources

according to the authors of the study, apparently it's the students themselves who are inflating their grades by deliberatively choosing 'easy' or 'easier' classes.

anyway, harvard still sucks.

[Jeff Hopkins '82]

[Q]min Wrote:

According to the authors of the study, apparently it's the students themselves who are inflating their grades by deliberatively choosing 'easy' or 'easier' classes.

[/q]

And this is a surprise?  I took as many intro courses as I could over my four years, and the 200 level courses I took were all ones that were known to be somewhat easier than most.  I figured it was the least Cornell could do for suffering four years in ChemE.

[Trotsky]

If you give an undergrad a "C," you'll be sued by his parents.  If you flunk him, you'll be put to death by your own Dean.

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]Jeff Hopkins '82 Wrote:

 [Q2]min Wrote:

According to the authors of the study, apparently it's the students themselves who are inflating their grades by deliberatively choosing 'easy' or 'easier' classes.

[/Q]
And this is a surprise?  I took as many intro courses as I could over my four years, and the 200 level courses I took were all ones that were known to be somewhat easier than most.  I figured it was the least Cornell could do for suffering four years in ChemE.
[/q]

I took one 400-level Old English course to satisfy a distribution requirement and another as an elective.  And a 400-level Germanic Linguistics course for another distribution requirement.  The way I see it, you should get more out of an Ivy League education than just an Ivy League diploma.

[cornelldavy]

When I wasn an undergrad, I took an 800-level Olde English course. Repeatedly.



I don't think it helped my GPA, though.

[dsr11]

I'm getting an MBA at NYU Stern right now, and you really have to work to get less than a B.  The one exception is any Finance class, but even then, only the bottom 15% of the class gets less than a B-.  For everything else, if you hand in papers and show up for exams, you will get a B.  If you answer questions on the exams and put a little effort into the papers, you'll get a B+.  If you suck up to the prof and devote your entire life to the class, you can get an A or A-.  

So yeah, grade inflation is alive and well in grad school, especially business schools.  Also, at least with business schools, employers often pay (mine is) and require a minimum GPA (usually a 3.0).  If a school gives less than that, they are risking losing $100k in revenue.  

I know one prof at NYU who asks who, at the beginning of the term, asks who is graduating.  Everyone that is graduating gets an A- automatically.  Gotta love it.  The place is called "B" school for a reason :-)

[Jerseygirl]

Nice, Alex. I took that class too, but with Prof. Mad Dog.

My personal pet peeve was that it's apparently impossible to get below an A-/B+ in creative writing classes because people think good writing is "subjective." We don't have to get into a detailed discussion as to why this is a load of crap, but it is. We may like to read about different things, but aside from oh, I don't know, proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation, there are other non-negotiables like plot and character development, sense of story, tension, realistic dialogue, voice, etc.
Writing well is as hard to do as anything else, and there's no reason creative writing classes should be graded as though that isn't true.

[jtwcornell91]

Creative writing and my freshman writing seminar in Comp Lit were the two courses where I was surprised to get a grade as high as A-.  Maybe there was already something fishy going on fifteen years ago.

In retrospect I wish I hadn't taken English 281, since then I would have fulfilled my Humanities distribution requirement entirely at the 400 level.  Of course, as it turns out I get to say I took Beowulf as an elective. B-]

[Jerseygirl]

Yes, but you missed out on the Heaney translation of Beowulf, which is really wonderful. My senior year I got really meta when I combined both of my English concentrations in a short story I wrote called "Occupational Hazard," where the protaganist's ultimate triumph is spurred on by reading Beowulf at her brother's urging. The siblings are both hockey players, so that even metas in with this board. Ooooooh.

That preceding paragraph? I've never been dorkier in my entire life.