<p>^ That’s exactly why I think the whole hard/easy thing lies in the curves, simply because you’re compared against your own student body. It follows simple reason that you would have to work considerably harder to get an A in a curved class at Princeton than at a lesser school, simply because the quality of work considered average at Princeton will be higher (by how much, I do not know) than what would be considered average at a lesser university.</p>
<p>That’s my personal issue with using GPA as such a strong component of the application (not that it matters). An A at one school may be equivalent to a B at another, yet med schools will toss out your app for having that lower set of grades, even if the amount you learned and the work you did was equivalent or greater than that of the kid who got the A at an easier school.</p>