joseph95

Okay, I'm sure this has been mentioned before so please forgive me. I have been hearing more and more about how Princeton has adopted a policy of grade deflation (no more than 35% get As) and while I do think this is appropriate given how inflated grades have gotten, I want to make sure this does not put me at a disadvantage if I am accepted and attend. For example, is somebody from Yale with a 3.8 GPA (where there is no deflation) going to get into a grad school or a job over me if I have a 3.5 at Princeton? Or are employers fully aware and evaluating WITHIN each school? Thank you.

Also, on a different subject, how is Princeton's Financial Engineering program?

KeDIX1414

Princeton is my first choice, and I've been wondering the same thing. I would think that if you wanted to apply to Harvard Law School, Harvard would be familiar with Princeton and know about the grade deflation. Somebody correct me if I am wrong. As for employers, I don't know, but since Princeton is regarded as one of the world's best universities, I don't worry so much

gravitas2

It is interesting to see that the same cohort of "prospective" students that once haunted Chicago's forum have emigrated to the Princeton's forum to be "concerned" about grade "deflation." I am concerned as an educated adult in one of "the" professions that certain "prospective" students are more concerned about GPA than getting a strong liberal education that prepares you to be a global thinker...I can assure you (as many other CC posters have mentioned in previous posts) if you are only concerned about getting into a good law school or med school you need not attend Princeton, Chicago, MIT, or any other tough schools. All you have to do is get easy As from a state school and "study" for your "Kaplan" LSAT or MCAT. I would hope that my future physician or attorney would be humanistic rather than just be concerned about how much money he makes. In truth, especially in medicine, there is a negative correlation between the medical school one attends and one's income. On average, the higher ranked medical schools produce "academic" research oriented medical professionals who make less than the state school medical graduates who go into "practical" practicing medicine. In law and business, the opposite holds true (in general), one generally does better attending elite top 5 or 7 law or business schools.

In general, the medical profession is more meritocratic while law and business is more "old boys" network.

lefthandofdog

Nice post, gravitas. I shake my (grey) head when I read about teenagers concerned that a "low" GPA at Princeton might hold them back in life. Really?

Boondocks

This question gets asked over and over again.

Professional schools are all well-aware of Princeton’s grading policy, so it won’t affect your admissions chances when you’re going up against a Harvard grad. They also have GRE's, LSAT's and MCAT's to guide them.

PhD programs are aware of the grading policy as well, but they depend more on your professors’ ratings of you than your GPA, anyway. The Ivy professors are all nationally/internationally-known, and more often than not have had some contact with the professor at the University of Wisconsin who is considering having you work with him or her.

Employers that regularly from the Ivies also are well-aware of Princeton's grading policy.

These places all see numerous people from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and countless other schools across the country. They not only have had to distinguish between Harvard and Princeton grads, they have also had to determine if an Oklahoma student with a 3.9 GPA has learned more than a Harvard grad with a 3.9 (and don't think that they won't hire or admit a sharp kid from the University of Oklahoma over a Harvard grad who doesn't come across as sharp and personable).

Employers that don’t regularly hire from the Ivies might think that the Harvard or Yale grad with a higher GPA has out-achieved the Princeton grad, but these companies are rarely considering a Yale grad and a Princeton grad at the same time.

I wouldn’t worry about a school’s grading policy affecting your life – only one prospective employer in my life asked to see my transcript, and they still interviewed me despite my average (for the time) 3.1 GPA. And that was for a job working for a US Senator's staff that had countless applications. They found other things I had done to be interesting, which is why they pulled my resume out of the pile (for me, the job sounded so boring that I passed on it after the interview, so I never learned whether they wanted to hire me or not).

Rather than worrying about grade deflation, you’re better off expending your energy on getting into one of the Ivy schools – not many students get the option of going to even one of them.