BU Grade Deflation is Very Real

BUBailey
Fri, 24 Dec 2010 23:43:38 +0000

True, bananafonez, but it’s skewed anyway; the top 10% at Harvard are likely very different than the top 10% at BU than the top 10% at Big State U than at Podunk ville Bible College (not a knock on any of those schools, of course ). The only thing you can tell yourself is that getting an A at BU, where it is very tough to get an A, means you truly earned it, and that’s an accomplishment. There’s always a bit of luck involved in grading, unless you’re a pure math major or something.

As to your other question…yes and no. BU clearly has a reputation for deflating grades, so other schools certainly know that. That being said…law school and med school especially are very numbers driven. The law school that admits you wants to report the highest gpa it can to bring up its own ranking, so a 3.5 at BU, while probably the rough equivalent of a 3.8 at Big State U, just doesn’t add as much to a entering class profile. But the fact that you went to a good school and got a good gpa there is important. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t count on it being an x factor in your admission-you need to be sure the rest of your application is very good too.