<p>I talked to a Senior who was just recently accepted into Princeton.
“The only Ivy League I wouldn’t apply to is Cornell!” he said. I was surprised, until he claimed that the average final grade at Cornell is a C.
Is that really true?!
He said that he wouldn’t be able to stand getting that kind of grade in college after all the work he put in to high school.
If I don’t like getting C’s, should I stay away from Cornell too?</p>
<p>Thanks for the help!</p>
<p>I don’t know what your senior friend is talking about - if anything, Princeton’s academics are just as grueling as Cornell’s.</p>
<p>Im sure Cornell hands out its fair share of C’s but the average GPA is probably in the 3.1-3.2 range.</p>
<p>no one likes getting C’s. </p>
<p>Yes, Cornell is very rigorous and demanding…even when compared to other ivy league schools. You will have to work very hard. It’s up to you to decide how hard you are willing to work. </p>
<p>If you are looking for easy A’s, then maybe its not the right school for you. </p>
<p>But its still a little extreme to say “don’t go to that school, you might get a C.”</p>
<p>I don’t understand where the person you were talking to was coming from, does he really think he’s not going to have to work hard at Princeton to avoid getting C’s?</p>
<p>Yeah, that’s kind of a dumb thing to say. You don’t avoid a school because you ‘don’t like getting Cs’. Just like any upper-echelon institution, there’s going to be difficult classes and some that curve, so even if you’re doing well, if you aren’t doing better than the rest, you might come up short. </p>
<p>Again, as stated from previous posters, it’s called studying and preparing well (actually attending class also doesn’t hurt) and you’ll be rewarded for hard effort (especially if you maintain consistent contact with the professors, express concerns you have regarding your grades or progress, and make the effort to visit during office hours and extra credit lectures.) </p>
<p>Sounds like he’s basically saying ‘Cornell’s too hard, I wouldn’t go there.’ Plus the average final grade for graduates is most definitely not a C…it’s probably around a 3.1-3.3 (B).</p>
<p>Cornell = B+ averages</p>
<p>ive seen maybe a couple of classes with median in the Cs, i did saw one D median though hahhaa. but its mostly in the Bs</p>
<p>norcalguy…what percentage of students earn a B+ GPA and in what majors are you referring to? If you are a brilliant student that may be possible in every class but I would consider my own sons to be in the upper level of admitted students, and I can say that has not been the case for them in every class or every semester. I would say a B is more the case if a student is working very hard. I also agree 100% that Cornell is much tougher than Princeton or Columbia. My sons have many friends at both of these schools and they are not dealing with the same grade deflation as Cornell…and that is the fact based on the same courses and work involved.</p>
<p>personal experience: I got all A’s in high school and I get mostly B’s with a side of A’s at Cornell, so it is a step down in GPA…but not down to a C. I rarely get C’s and I’m definitely not among the brilliant ones here.</p>
<p>If the median is a 3.4, by definition, 50% of the students have over a 3.4. </p>
<p>This is averaged across all majors.</p>
<p>I personally think the Ivy League schools are about equal in difficulty. Princeton, which has actively curbed grade inflation, is the only school where the average GPA is lower today than it was 10 years ago. So, if I had to pick one school, I would pick Princeton as the most difficult Ivy League school (it’s average GPA is 3.28 vs. 3.36 for Cornell; plus, it’s students are brighter).</p>
<p>typical princeton kid</p>
<p>norgalguy…You are a former Cornell student but I found the last part of your post to be riduculous. I made a statement based on comparison of classes within the same major. I have two sons at Cornell in different majors. They are both excellent students but the grades do not come easy. It is evident that in the classes that their friends have taken at both Princeton and Columbia, the work at Cornell has been far more extensive. That has been their experience as far as grading and course work. Their friends at Princeton and Columbia are the ones who pointed this out. This is not to say that either of the schools are a piece of cake…they are not…but Cornell seems to be more rigorous in the majors that my sons and their friends share.</p>
<p>just curious, what are those majors?</p>
<p>C average is obviously an exaggeration. That would mean more than half the people in the engineering school would fail (right skewed?). </p>
<p>It doesn’t matter what college you go to. Get used to having everything standardized. Some schools are known for having grades centered lower than others, but employers and grad schools understand this anyway.</p>
<p>One might infer from the varying Dean’s List cutoffs that the different colleges have somewhat different grading norms.</p>
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<p>Give me a break. Last time I checked, Cornell students were not required to take a rigorous core (a la Columbia) or write two junior papers and a senior thesis (a la Princeton).</p>
<p>In most courses and majors there is not going to be a discernible difference between the difficulty of Cornell and Princeton. For all majors, the difference at Princeton will be that you’re required to do a senior thesis, while at Cornell only honors students write one.</p>
<p>In some majors (biology) Cornell is likely to be a bit more difficulty. In other fields (math) Princeton will likely be a bit more difficult, but at the same time, Princeton math students tend to be pretty smart.</p>
<p>Any difference in the perceived difference of Princeton academics vs. Cornell will come down to the fact that a) at the margins, Princeton students are smarter than Cornell students, and b) a certain subset of Cornell students like to complain. A lot.</p>
<p>I really don’t understand why people can’t be logical about this. The median grades for all of Cornell’s classes are online! What more proof can you want? Instead of resorting to anecdotes and myths and whining, let’s please use some support to back up what we’re saying.</p>
<p>And saying that Cornell’s academics is as hard as Princeton’s by no means denigrates the quality or rigor of Cornell’s academics! Cornell is not too easy, not too hard and prepares you well for post-grad life. Isn’t that what we want from a school anyway?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That and a good hockey team.</p>
<p>An on campus waterfall wouldn’t hurt either.</p>
<p>We’ve already made this list a hundred times…</p>
<p>Anyway, You are all starting to become very confusing because no one wants to argue that the academics are difficult and scare away prospectives and no one wants to argue that they are too easy and make our degrees worth less.</p>