crixx

How bad is the grade deflation especially in the sciences? Because the top major is biology, is it harder to get high grades and stand out?

dietcokewithlime

There's no grade deflation at Carleton. If anything, it's probably harder to have a high GPA in humanities or social science majors than science majors; at the very least, it is the case that people with very high GPAs are disproportionately science majors. It's also not an issue of "standing out" for professors. They won't ignore you just because you're not the #1 student in the department.

Leshachikha

My experience: At Carleton, As aren't handed out all that often, but it's not too hard to get a B. Our average GPA is something like a 3.1, which is reasonably high, but as far as I understand, 3.9s/4.0s are nigh on unheard of.

I've heard tell that we rank 3rd or something in grade deflation, but I can't remember the source. Does anyone know?

fireflyscout

I believe that I've read that a good number of students graduate with honors - something like 40% of graduates?

Maize&Blue

Students who have outstanding records in all course work will earn the Bachelor of Arts degree with honors, either cum laude (for a GPA of 3.25 or better), magna cum laude (3.50 or better), or summa cum laude (3.90 or better).
Carleton College Academic Catalog: Academic Regulations
Please correct me if I'm not remembering this correctly, but a couple of years ago I recall a dean mentioning at parent weekend that about 10 students graduate summa.

crixx

So would a 3.8+ be considered insanely hard to achieve? This worries me because med schools focus mainly on numbers. Do Carls get admitted to top med schools?

1190

Leshachikha: "we rank 3rd or something in grade deflation" - you're probably remembering the so-called Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley Law School) formula that used a correction factor to re-calculate GPAs among applicants based on school of origin and approximated grade inflation/deflation (possibly using LSAT scores as the correlate). Carleton was given the 4th highest correction factor in the country behind Swarthmore, Williams and Duke but I'd mention that this data is several years old (more than a decade).

crixx: The median GPA at Carleton was actually a 3.35 back in 2001. It presumably remains in this general range or slightly higher, pretty much middle of the pack among similarly ranked schools. Course rigor is quite high. Grad/professional schools know (and respect) this. In part for these reasons, med school acceptance percentages are quite high among GPAs over 3.5. A 3.8+, is not impossible but definitely a singular achievement. In any given year this represents about the top 5-10% of the graduating class.

bingle

cum laude: GPA of 3.25 or better
magna cum laude: 3.50 or better
summa cum laude 3.90 or better

If anyone has/was a recent grad you can check the program and see how many in each category. I couldn't find #s on the website.

bingle

BTW, can someone explain grade deflation to me? It seems I just read an post on Grade Inflation which I presumed was a concern that more kids are getting A's than a bell curve distribution would warrant. Listening to my 11th grader, it seems that they're learning material at a much higher level than I did (or maybe just that I remember, LOL) and so grades might be up accordingly.
When I was at Carleton we were on a 3.0 system and there was debate over whether there was grade inflation to keep people from a U (not passing) when they had a D. If so, I may well have been a beneficiary in my second (and last) calc course.

We also had no GPA distinctions between + and -. id a C-, C and C+ were all a 1.0 I was definitely hurt by that since I got a disproportionate number of B+ and C+

bingle

just heard back from my neice '08 - "There were 17 or 18 of us who were summa in my class. I don't know about the other groups." Seems to me it was more like 4-5 in the 70's, IIRC

CarlosCarlos

I thought 'C' was supposed to be average, and the other grades usually fell in frequency on a bell-curve. Maybe if 'B+' were universally adjusted to be 'C' it would make more sense. Why is it that most colleges have a median GPA of B/B+? It doesn't really fool me into having a some false sense of accomplishment. My mediocre grade is still mediocre (even if it is labeled as "significantly above average" according to the supposed significance of my grade according to the GPA system). Weird!

LACalum

With regards to med school, I'm pretty certain that the vast majority of Carleton applicants get in somewhere if they have a 3.3ish or higher and a solid MCAT score. Top med schools? I'm guessing above a 3.6 would give you a pretty good shot (although I would like to mention that, unless you are really set on dermatology or doing medical research, a "top" med school shouldn't be a huge priority).

grumpy

Attending the 2008 graduation for a young relative, I was struck by how many folks were graduating with some kind of honors – at least compared to when I graduated in the early 1980s. So I did a bit of counting. In my graduating class, 21.2, 16.1 and 1.6 percent graduated cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude, respectively. In contrast, the 2008 class had 26.5, 46.2, and 5.2 percent in the same respective categories. While I have no idea how this compares to other schools, it is interesting how the numbers have changed over time. I’d say that grade inflation is alive and well at Carleton. I don’t know how it breaks down by major. Of interest is the fact that over 51% of this year’s class is either magna cum laude or summa – meaning the median GPA is above 3.5.

dietcokewithlime

^ Yeah, I was also blown away by the sheer number of magnas and summas this year. I felt bad for the students (bottom 22%) who weren't graduating with some kind of honors. Their names looked conspicuously naked in the graduation program. No question, Carleton has had some serious grade inflation in recent years. I wonder what the cum laude/magna cum laude/summa cum laude breakdowns are like at Pomona, Amherst, Williams, etc.

treefarmer1

My son barely got a cum lauda at Williams with a 3.6 I believe lauda is top 30%, summa 10-15% and magna just a few %. So 70% graduate without any honors there. Williams is in the midst of grade deflation, with average around 3.3 I believe.