GPA Trends Over Time: UChicago vs Peers

f77a9b82
Sat, 28 Jul 2018 17:47:27 +0000

One of the perennial debates on this forum surrounds the issue of grade deflation. Many of the UChicago critics argue that grade deflation is rampant in Hyde Park, and absent from other peer schools. The argument goes: if you want to go to a top grad school, then why go to a place like UChicago where you will be worked to the bone, and have a crappy GPA to show for it.

This is a valid question and has perplexed me, and so I thought I’d try and find an answer. The main issue is that only the registrar has stats on GPA trends over time. I could find nothing that showed mean/distributions over time. A Washington Post reporter (Stuart Rojstaczer) did an in depth analyses on this same topic, and published his work in 2003. He then created a website (http://www.gradeinflation.com) that presents a lot of quality information. Rojstaczer obtained his information from a variety of sources (administrators, newspapers, campus publications, etc). While Rojstaczer’s information is quite interesting, most of the charts and data are presented up until about 2005.

Clearly there has been an awakening and resurgence of interest in UChicago, and most of this happened after Rojstaczer’s fact finding ended. After attending the revisit days and several receptions, my general sense is that UChicago has a new long-term interest in improving its reputation. Part of this involves making the campus more appealing for the undergrads: new dorms, better gyms, more food options, MTA pass, etc. But undoubtedly one of the most critical items is eliminate the “where fun goes to die” moniker. No doubt the administration wants happier students, who turn out to be happy alumni and donate more money.

So what’s been happening GPA wise at UChicago over the last 5+ years? And how does this trend compare to peer schools? This is hard question to answer unless you have access to the college registrar.

However, I managed to find a dataset from the American Bar Association. The ABA publishes trends of mean GPA of all law school applicants from top feeder schools. Fortunately this data goes back several years, and all of this is publicly available. A weakness of this dataset is that the average GPA of law school applicants may not be reflective of average GPA of the entire undergrad population. But if we assume that the average law school applicant from UChicago is similar to the average applicant from Dartmouth or Columbia, then it would be possible to compare trends over time.

Here is the dataset
Top 240 Feeder Schools for ABA Applicants to All Terms Academic Years 2012–2016
https://www.lsac.org/lsacresources/data/top-240-feeder-schools

Here is a summary of the data for UChicago compared to peer schools from 2012-2017:

        2012    2013    2014    2015    2016    2017
Brown       3.73    3.71    3.74    3.74    3.76    3.75
Dartmouth   3.56    3.55    3.58    3.51    3.66    3.75
Yale        3.68    3.70    3.70    3.72    3.76    3.73
Stanford    3.64    3.64    3.66    3.65    3.74    3.71
Columbia    3.63    3.70    3.62    3.68    3.70    3.70
Harvard     3.63    3.65    3.68    3.69    3.68    3.69
Duke        3.55    3.57    3.58    3.57    3.61    3.69
Penn        3.55    3.53    3.61    3.58    3.63    3.68
Cornell     3.52    3.55    3.60    3.66    3.65    3.62
UChicago    3.50    3.53    3.58    3.57    3.59    3.60
Princeton   3.43    3.51    3.42    3.39    3.53    3.55

The data is sorted based on 2017 data (from high to low). You’ll see that Brown has the highest mean GPA, and has been that way for many years. The average GPA for UChicago law school applicants is considerably lower than Brown (3.75 vs 3.60). The lowest mean GPA is undoubtedly Princeton, and has been this way for quite some time. According to Rojstaczer Princeton’s administration made a concerted effort to eliminate grade deflation, but according to the data above, they still have some work to do.

But fortunately for UChicago, there are signs of hope. The mean GPA for law school applicants has increased by 0.10 from 2012 to 2017. This may not sound like a lot, but this now puts UChicago within striking distance of the other schools. The trend for Chicago has been upward over time. If you look at Rojstaczer’s data from UChicago, the average GPA has changed dramatically: http://www.gradeinflation.com/Chicago.html

1926-1927: 2.54
1965: 2.50
1999: 3.26
2006: 3.35

So what is the bottom line? Things are getting better in Chi-town. Probably not due to easier classes, but it maybe that professors are giving out higher grades? Is this due to better students? Or more lax standards? Who knows. But I do see this as a good sign that UChicago is on the rise. Does it mean that you’ll have an easy time at UChicago? Not sure, but it does appear that the GPAs are trending upward.