universityguys (u/universityguys)

universityguys commented on Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA features.thecrimson.com/2... · Posted by u/universityguys

hintymad · 4 years ago

This is not just Harvard, right? Elite schools, especially the so called ivy schools, have been inflating GPAs for years. In the meantime, they have been putting more weight on "holistic" admission over academic performance. So the US has been so advanced that academic performance is of secondary importance? Leadership is what matters most? Do I understand it correctly?

universityguys · 4 years ago

Most of the students admitted have top percentile grades/test scores as well. But the competition at the very top is based in leadership rather than minuscule differences in testing, yes.

universityguys commented on Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA features.thecrimson.com/2... · Posted by u/universityguys

PretzelPirate · 4 years ago

> The second reason is that the choice to go to Harvard is itself a smart choice.

It may be a smart choice, but not all smart people who try to make that choice get in.

> The first time I was exposed to people from top-tier universities is when I entered the industry. I was absolutely blown away by the quality difference.

I’ve worked in software engineering with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT students. The only difference I saw was during their first couple of years out of undergrad where the people who went to prestigious schools had more confidence to jump in and solve problems. After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school.

universityguys · 4 years ago

"I’ve worked in software engineering with Harvard, Stanford, and MIT students. The only difference I saw was during their first couple of years out of undergrad where the people who went to prestigious schools had more confidence to jump in and solve problems. After those first two-ish years, people’s abilities correlated more with who they were and not where they went to school."

Have you considered that the students whom you are working with were among the bottom quartile at their alma mater? The very best tend to take unique paths.

universityguys commented on Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA features.thecrimson.com/2... · Posted by u/universityguys

mynameisvlad · 4 years ago

Is there evidence for it being a strong signal in the first place?

Once you have work experience, either from your first few jobs, or for some from internships, then your school rarely matters. It's not like you learned some revolutionary thing that is exclusive to MIT 20 years ago, or that whatever you learned is even applicable for that matter.

universityguys · 4 years ago

I feel like Harvard and MIT, those two universities in particular, carry a very unique cachet. Other elite universities may not be so worth it.

universityguys commented on Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA features.thecrimson.com/2... · Posted by u/universityguys

gnicholas · 4 years ago

I did consider the possibility that one could say "I got into Harvard but went to X because..."

This could have made sense before Harvard's financial aid became so generous, but now they give loads of aid to middle- and low-income students.

It would sound a bit weird to keep saying "I got into Harvard...", likely for the same reason you mention at the end. Who wants to be an eliteness snob? Unfortunately there are many such people in the world, which is part of the reason their cachet persists.

universityguys · 4 years ago

I have known multiple Stanford students who still bring up the fact that they "also got into Harvard." It seems that if you get into Harvard, you should just go. The brand name is too powerful.

universityguys commented on Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA features.thecrimson.com/2... · Posted by u/universityguys

JPKab · 4 years ago

The modern Ivy League campus is a popularity contest amongst professors. Universities are filled with a growing cadre of administrators, and the administrators focus on appeasing student complaints, always taking the side of students against faculty.

Professors are afraid of upsetting students, or being called bigots if a person in some protected identity group gets a bad grade and complains about bias. This is an inevitable consequence of campus culture having a strong belief in guilt-by-accusation.

universityguys · 4 years ago

This is the argument Professor Mansfield at Harvard uses (the bigot part). Inspiration from him or just coincidence?

universityguys commented on Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA features.thecrimson.com/2... · Posted by u/universityguys

bitL · 4 years ago

Is Stanford different? I've heard that in this year's NLP class (CS224N), 93% was only good for B+ which doesn't sound like grade inflation at all.

universityguys · 4 years ago

Stanford has grade inflation, but not at the level at Harvard. Faculty senate said median GPA is 3.69 (so less than 50% have at least a 3.7, despite being just as selective as Harvard). And this is after taking into account that Stanford A+ is 4.3.

universityguys commented on Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA features.thecrimson.com/2... · Posted by u/universityguys

booboofixer · 4 years ago

Shocking. Here's something to compare it to. It is rumored that engineering courses at University of Toronto never have an average above 70, and if they do everybody gets curved down. Confirmed by my probability professor who showed us the effects of the curve on everyone's grades.

A 70 corresponds to 2.7 GPA:

https://undergrad.engineering.utoronto.ca/calculate-gpa/

https://www.reddit.com/r/UofT/comments/672fj3/what_is_the_av...

universityguys · 4 years ago

To be fair, U of Toronto is nowhere near selective as Harvard.

universityguys commented on Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA features.thecrimson.com/2... · Posted by u/universityguys

lordleft · 4 years ago

Is Grade Inflation really a problem at a top school? Why is it surprising that driven students at an elite institution are probably going to do well most of the time? I'd take this over moronic experiments like grade deflation at Princeton -- imagine being mandated to give only a small proportion of your students an A in, say, a Calc I class.

I'm slightly annoyed at this discourse because I went to Columbia, an institution that seemed hellbent at enforcing some vague sense of rigor at the expense of the sanity of most of its students. I certainly want to be challenged, and don't want top Universities to be glorified country clubs masquerading as academic environments, but I also think that what a defines substantive and rigorous eduction is at the highest level is actually quite hard to pin down.

universityguys · 4 years ago

Why does Harvard have orders of magnitudes higher GPA than any school with comparable student bodies other than Yale?

universityguys commented on Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA features.thecrimson.com/2... · Posted by u/universityguys

photochemsyn · 4 years ago

If you are a professor at an Ivy League school, your life will be much easier if you go along with grade inflation - i.e. don't create tests and assignments that are too difficult or challenging. Otherwise it'll be a constant battle over points on assignments and tests.

The kids going to such elite institutions (similar to the British public school program for the posh) probably mostly came out of private high schools that also inflated grades, and if SATs are used, they probably had SAT tutors - so they're going to be used to getting top scores on everything, and will complain mightily if that changes.

I don't really think the point of those schools is to really get a top-notch education, anyway - as with the British system, the point is to network with other children from wealthy elite families, which is a launchpad into the upper circles of government, business and media. The Atlantic spelled it out recently:

The answer lies in the specific nature of Ivy League elitism, which is an aristocracy of networks. Ivy League graduates make up 0.4 percent of the country. They are significantly overrepresented in Fortune 500 C-suites, in the House of Representatives, in the Senate, in academia, and in the media.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/ivy-league...

As far as anyone who wants a useful education in technology/science/math/engineering, you really want to go to a research-centric school that's small enough to allow you a chance to work directly with active research groups - even in a menial position. If you want to go onto graduate school, that experience is more valuable than anything else. Grades and GRE scores also matter, and will help with things like paid fellowships, but not nearly as much as hands-on experience with a real research group. Also, always take the harder series - a C grade in an advanced physics course for physics majors will mean more than an A grade in the softer version for non-majors, for example.

universityguys · 4 years ago

most students at harvard and other elite universities come from american public schools, for the record. very high concentration of rich preppy private school kids, yes, but majority is still public.

universityguys commented on Grade Inflation: Over 82% of Harvard '22 Graduating With Over a 3.7 (A-) GPA features.thecrimson.com/2... · Posted by u/universityguys

jeffbee · 4 years ago

"Elite" wall street guys just hire their pals from Yale, and their kids, and their friends kids, as long as they went to Yale. Even if they are as dumb as rocks.

The only thing less objectively "elite" than the American investment firm is the American House of Representatives.

universityguys · 4 years ago

This is true. It is simultaneously true that many of these people have excellent credentials from a signaling standpoint. e.g. Shaw loves their Rhodes Scholars