<p>does Columbia deflate GPA?</p>
<p>I know Princeton does.</p>
<p>In my experience (I’m a rising senior), it’s the exact opposite. The lowest percent A range reported on my transcript is 29% for the infamous intro bio course. But this is a generalization, obviously.</p>
<p>I agree with demeter. In my experience, it also varied across departments. Hard sciences/quantitative courses tended to be difficult, with a ‘stricter’ ‘curve’, while social sciences and humanities tended to be more generous (my history classes ranged from the 40s to 50s in terms of percent A-range grades). That being said, the single most difficult class to get an A in during my time at Columbia was Bollingers Freedom of Speech and Press class with a low teens percent A-ranage grades. That’s worse than the pre-med killing Bio courses.</p>
<p>I forgot to mention this before - though the grading policies may shift depending on your course of study, and may or may not be harder or easier than our peer schools, our cutoffs for latin honors are certainly more stringent. No more than 25% of the graduating class at CC qualifies for latin honors (cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude). Compare this to Yale (30%) and Harvard (50%). </p>
<p>Then there’s the Dean’s List (given on a semesterly basis to anyone with a 3.6 or higher that semester), and departmental honors, which are all calculated seperately. Phi Beta Kappa honors are given to no more than 10% of the class and are based on some voodoo combination of secret faculty nominations and gpa. Anyway, that’s a rundown of grades and their impact on other things.</p>