"For example, I am absolutely convinced that it would be much more difficult to get a 3.7 GPA in chemical engineering at Florida State, compared to getting a 3.7 GPA in history at Cornell. If your ultimate goal is to get into a top law school, just major in a fluff major (of which there are plenty at Cornell) and avoid any math/science courses like plague. If your GPA is still crap despite taking that strategy, then it is totally your fault, not Cornell's."
That totally depends on the person. I'm certain that I would have a much easier time getting a 3.7 in chemical engineering here than getting a 3.7 in history here.
"What's so bad about including the median grade? "
Low median grades on transcript didn't help employer/professional school admissions to realize a student is doing well, it only gives wrong impression of this school's students are not of good quality as other schools which is totally false.
If you read my old posts, my dauther's high school top of the class is at Cornell and #5 goes to Harvard.
My view on this issue is that this whole grade deflation thing is way over-hyped. Yes, it is more difficult to get a 3.8 GPA at Cornell, compared to getting a 3.8 GPA at Rutgers, all-else equal. However, I am inclined to believe that getting a high GPA is much more of a function of 1) a student's major, 2) a student's course selection.
For example, I am absolutely convinced that it would be much more difficult to get a 3.7 GPA in chemical engineering at Florida State, compared to getting a 3.7 GPA in history at Cornell. If your ultimate goal is to get into a top law school, just major in a fluff major (of which there are plenty at Cornell) and avoid any math/science courses like plague. If your GPA is still crap despite taking that strategy, then it is totally your fault, not Cornell's.
@NYULawyerToBe
I think the comparison isn't so much between Cornell and Rutgers as it is Cornell and a school like Harvard that is known for grade inflation. It gives a false impression, especially given laymen perceptions of Harvard that already exist.
Also, I agree with the other poster that excelling in one field or another is very dependent on personal capacity. Despite your desire to do something else, perhaps you found a good field for yourself because you have more of an aptitude for analytical legal thought, whereas someone else may excel better with straightforward mathematical or scientific application.
I just don't think you can suggest people take a certain set of courses or majors to guarantee a higher gpa. Okay, maybe you have point about ethnic studies or certain outliers but lot of engineers, for example, would probably do awful in writing and philosophy courses.
Gosh, there are a lot more opinions here than facts. Sort of like the real world!
Anyway, I asked a family member who was at Cornell as a grad student (math/stat) about 20 years ago about all this. She said, "Is this strict curve thing a new policy? It wasn't like that. Yes, some people got low grades, but they earned them. But we didn't have to force people into Bs and Cs if they knew their stuff and met the required standards."
So I don't know what to think. Mindless curve-fitting is obviously silly. For example, if you have a class of 30 of your top math students taking an advanced analysis class, it'd be likely that you'd get only As and Bs in the class, no Cs at all. Maybe even mostly As. If Cornell is doing what I'd call mindless curve-fitting, then no question, that ought to be fixed.
Now what if the problem is that Cornell has higher standards than the others. Doesn't seem likely, since we're talking Harvard, Brown, Princeton, etc. as the peer group. So if there's a difference in grading standards that's hurting students, piously saying "other schools ought to change, not Cornell" is not very useful. Presumably Cornell decided to publish medians to make their grading standards clear. The complaint appears to be that this doesn't help, it's the spread that's an issue, and/or no one looks at the median, they just look at the absolute grades.
I find it difficult to believe that grad admissions just look at grades, not at the school. They don't do that sort of thing for undergrad admissions, so why would they get sillier about grad students?
I know that there are employers that look at grades, and some do so blindly. There is stupidity everywhere. But there are many that don't, and I do know that Cornell is well-regarded, certainly is seen as being a "top school", comparable to other names mentioned here (and well above Rutgers for example).
^
Well now, isn't that a condescendingly prickish post. Suggesting other schools stop grade inflation rather than Cornell stop grade deflation is not piously useless. Both are manipulations. Why not target the group that's making it look easier rather than the one making it look harder, given that these schools all uphold the highest expectations to begin with?
To your second point, a lot of professional programs and certain industries do make cold gpa calculations, at least for the first round of cuts. Most industries could care less what your gpa was, though.
This study was debunked many years ago. All recent research shows Cornell students have the lowest GPAs in the ivy league. The grading at cornell's undergraduate colleges is extremely difficult. The dean of the college (I think the college of arts and science) tells parents at orientation to expect their children will get Cs. The only college wth a nearly as difficult a grading curve is Princeton. But Princeton is the kind of school that it really makes no difference. The school's rep is world renowned. Cornell needs to change its crazy grading policies or the wall street journal's study showing that cornell is lousy at getting its grads into top programs will even get worse. I have a friend from Exeter at Stanford. She says cornell's hard grading helps students at other top schools where there is no curve and even in introductory courses, everyone can get an A or A- if they do the work. Unbelievable that cornell would so harshly grade its own paying students and use a curve in many majors like chem, econ.... I'm around a B+ GPA here, anywhere else it would probably be an A-.
My roommate who is Premed (2380 SAT and Val at a top Boston Public school) is transferring out because of how the hard grading hurts cornell premeds who according to the roommate are getting into med colleges at about 1/2 the rate of the other ivys and even have a lower acceptance rate than the SUNY colleges. The school is great in a lot of ways, but the tough grading here at Cornell is nuts. I have not met anyone here who disagrees.
Last edited by frankfrankabc; 10-28-2012 at 03:19 PM.
I think the comparison isn't so much between Cornell and Rutgers as it is Cornell and a school like Harvard that is known for grade inflation. It gives a false impression, especially given laymen perceptions of Harvard that already exist.
Look - someone who can't even crack a 3.0 GPA at Cornell isn't suddenly going to become a 3.5 GPA student, if that individual in question were at Harvard instead. Maybe a 3.4 GPA Cornell student can get a 3.5 or 3.6 GPA at Harvard, assuming all else equal. (I am highly skeptical of the validity of this condition, but I entertain the thought for now) Even if this condition holds true, it wouldn't have much impact on any given individual's employment outcome, nor graduate school placement.
Quote:
Also, I agree with the other poster that excelling in one field or another is very dependent on personal capacity. Despite your desire to do something else, perhaps you found a good field for yourself because you have more of an aptitude for analytical legal thought, whereas someone else may excel better with straightforward mathematical or scientific application.
I just don't think you can suggest people take a certain set of courses or majors to guarantee a higher gpa. Okay, maybe you have point about ethnic studies or certain outliers but lot of engineers, for example, would probably do awful in writing and philosophy courses.
As an alum of econ & government, I took my fair share of humanities courses at Cornell, many of which I considered to be a joke. Even in many of upper level courses in government, you had to try hard to get anything lower than a B. On the other hand, there are many students who flunk out of engineering/ CS/ or math, despite putting in sufficient level of effort.
Here's the thing - the more quantitative the majors/courses are, not only do these majors become more demanding intellectually, but also these courses tend to impose stricter grading curves compared to other majors/courses. In most of humanities courses, hardly anyone ever gets anything below a C, ever. (ppl who do are those types who come to class less than 5% of the time, or have significant mental challenges) In engineering on the other hand...
A random person may not be getting A's in philosophy or history courses at Cornell, but at least s/he will pass. (get at least a B if you work) If you go engineering/ CS/ math, unless you have a real talent, you face a significant risk of completely flunking out due to 1) intensely demanding course rigor/difficulty, 2) much unforgiving exam curves.
The only college wth a nearly as difficult a grading curve is Princeton. But Princeton is the kind of school that it really makes no difference. The school's rep is world renowned.
You would be surprised to find out that many grads from schools such as Harvard or Princeton with crap GPA's, who majored in humanities or general liberal arts, end up getting completely screwed job-wise. Many of them end up getting a 35k/yr job in Peace Corps, or go to law school as a last resort.
Kydali and Bar (I think one of them is at Cornell) the recent study showed comparison for GPA not accurate because cornell factors a+ at 4.3, others ((except for I think it was columbia) all factor it at a 4.0. Even with Cornell having the 4.3, it was still lowest!!!!,
without the 4.3, it would have been even much lower for average GPA compared to other ivys. Look at their study published a few yers ago - (orginal failed to account that cornell gave a 4.3.) Do the research for yourself. But nothing is more telling than the wall street journal survey which showed cornell as one of the worst for admission to top grad school schools. I saw it for the first time here on cc the other day. if I had seen it before, I would not have come here!!! Even worse, read the response of the cornell rep to the survey.... they can't even dispute it. The grading at this place is sad and hurts students in so many ways its crazy that the students have not done anything to change the hard grading policies, I guess we don't have the time. If this kind of extremely hard grading or median grading was going on at Columbia or Stanford, etc.., the student body there would for sure be protesting or walking out of classes.
If you read any of these kinds of web site like cc, the complaints about lousy grad school admissions and hard grading is a cornell problem and not something that goes on at any college. The crazy thing is that us students here are paying tuition for lousy grading during college that also hurts us after college. Whatever.
Oldfort, do you think the WSJ is incorrect?
Why does Cornell have 1/2 the admit rate to top schools compared to other ivys..... and premed students who get in a 1/2 the rate of other ivys. Cornell, a great school for sure but grading really hurts for grad school admissions. The WSJ article and the survey of cornell students in the first post basically shows the whole problem...... Cornell ranked lowest of the ivys in almost all categories in their own survey!! what does that tell you??
Last edited by frankfrankabc; 10-28-2012 at 05:35 PM.
Location: Southern California -> Cornell '16! Go Big Red!
Posts: 1,954
@NYULawyer
I'm also a Gov/Econ major. I'm suffering in Intermediate Micro right now. How bad is that compared to the rest of the Econ courses you took? Do you know anything about Applied Econometrics? I'm trying to be as un-quantitative as possible.
I'm also a Gov/Econ major. I'm suffering in Intermediate Micro right now. How bad is that compared to the rest of the Econ courses you took? Do you know anything about Applied Econometrics? I'm trying to be as un-quantitative as possible.
Int. Micro is one of harder courses in econ. So is applied econometrics. Good thing about econ major is that you are required to take only 8 upper level classes, and only three of those are mandatory. Other 5 courses - you can choose to your liking. If you want the easiest course work possible in econ, stay away from game theory, financial econ, and any stats/math-heavy courses. What you should look for are courses such as "history of economic theory", etc.
Location: Southern California -> Cornell '16! Go Big Red!
Posts: 1,954
"Major Requirements
The major itself requires a total of 8 courses at the 3000 level or above, with grades of C- or better. At least six of these courses must be at 3000-level, and must include:
Econ 3130 (Intermediate Micro) and 3140 (Intermediate Macro);
Either Econ 3210 (Applied Econometrics), or
Econ 3190 (Statistics) and Econ 3200 (Econometrics)."
Ugh. Applied Econometrics over Statistics/Econometrics? Or the other way around?
Is there much math involved in things like History of Economic Theory?
Ugh. Applied Econometrics over Statistics/Econometrics? Or the other way around?
Is there much math involved in things like History of Economic Theory?
Go with applied econometrics. Applied econometrics is Cornell's dumbed-down version of stats/econometrics for ppl whose strong suit isn't in the quantitative discipline. I know this from my experience. I took stats (300-level) and I was getting a low C or high D after first prelim and a couple of problem sets. Accordingly, I dropped that course. The semester after that, I took applied econometrics and I got a B in the course, and I found that course to be much easier than the former.
Since you seem to be extremely stressed out about GPA and course selection, as evident from your posts around here, I'll give you some tips. I graduated from Cornell with a 3.6 GPA, and I attribute that outcome to my smart strategy in course selection. As you can tell, I am not exactly a smart guy. At one point, I was getting a D+ in a 300-level stats course, as mentioned above.
I suggest you follow the following steps:
1) Always sign up for 6 or 7 courses each semester, up to 18 to 22 credits. After the first prelim period and before drop deadline, decide which course you are having the most difficulty in, and drop the course. In case you need more time to decide, you can even drop a course past drop deadline, but you will receive a "W" on your transcript. (which isn't a big deal at all) The reason I like this strategy is because it enabled me to sample more courses and gave me sufficient time to decide which courses I liked the best out of my schedule, as well as allowing me ample time to "try out" things and see what courses I had more success in.
2) Talk to your friends and others you know and constantly bother them, asking questions about courses they took so far and try to find out which courses they thought were easy. Incorporate people's advice and sign up for these courses.
3) Don't restrict yourself only to courses within college of arts & sciences. The easiest courses I took at Cornell hail from college of human ecology and ILR. There was this class I took in PAM that gave A's to 60% of people in class and B's to 40% of the class.
4) Within Econ major - take the course"Industrial Organization". This is by far the easiest class I took in Econ. I went to the class less than 10% of the time and barely studied, and still got an A in the class. In fact, all semester I didn't even open the text book for this course. The final exam was a 5-page research paper. I don't know of anyone who got a grade lower than a B+ in this course. Other honorable mentions within Econ department - "Money & Credit" and "Banks".
5) There is absolutely no benefit of double majoring in government and econ. Government major is pretty useless to most employers anyway, and while I found most of government courses not difficult conceptually, I found them to be annoying and sometimes too much reading and other non-sense BS. In addition, some government professors at upper level courses were pain to deal with and adopted harsh grading. If you don't love government, I suggest you drop it and just do Econ. That will free up your schedule quite a bit and enable you to fill up your course schedule with whatever electives you want - many of which would be more fun and easier than government upper level courses. In hindsight, this is what I wish I've done, and I am sure had I adopted this approach I would've graduated with higher GPA with less stress.
