<p>Chicago seems to grade the same as places like Cornell, Columbia, Emory, and Vanderbilt. Chicago, like these schools has an average graduating GPA of about 3.4. This means most people have very solid GPAs. The only issue is that you are going into the sciences. Schools in the 3.3-3.4 suite of grading tend to grade sciences more traditionally than schools like Harvard, Brown, Yale, or Stanford. At schools like Chicago and the others, it is still typical for curved science courses to only be adjusted to a solid B- mean (and sometimes somewhere between C+/B-) as opposed to the B/B+ (and in Brown, Yale, and Stanford’s case, B+/A-). However, often upper division courses in sciences, while difficult, will have less stricter standards for grading. It is not atypical for them to adjust to a B average or design a curriculum/workload that allows for a solid B average w/o any adjustment (like keeping exams difficult, but having other components like projects and presentations that can buffer the effect of a bad/mediocre exam score). While Chicago is certainly more rigorous than many of its peers, it seems not to go through any lengths to make good grades impossible or even difficult to get (looks like most people get As and Bs and are fine). It’s not as tough with grading rigor as places like Princeton, MIT, and Johns Hopkins for example. Chicago rewards you nicely for “putting up with” their challenging coursework in comparison to those 3 schools.</p>