Grade Deflation... is it really that bad?

ptontiger13
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 04:56:15 +0000

Ok, multiple things need to be addressed here.


Never ever ever listen to a “friend of a friend of a friend” when it comes to a school’s atmosphere. I go to Princeton. I’d tell you any day that I’d much rather be here than at Yale or Harvard. You’ll get this from any student at any school unless they are miserable.
Grade deflation has really only affected a small subset of classes. The grade distributions in science+engineering classes have barely changed or have given out more A’s in recent history. The classes that were most affected by this policy are the large lecture classes in the humanities like ECO101 or something to the likes of that.
You’ll never have to deal with something like being in a small seminar and the professor artificially cuts off the amount of A’s to a very small set of people in the course. In classes like these, the professors always tell the students at the start of the course (in my courses and my friends’) that if you do A quality work you will get an A.
Most language classes are precurved and some larger courses are precurved as well like the introductory chemistry courses.
Do some people get “grade deflated”? Yes. It happens. Is it a very small but vocal minority that will raise hell over it when it happens? Yes. I can’t tell you how many surveys we’ve filled out in the past 2.5 years I’ve been here about grading policies and academic life. Things are in the works to be changed and the dean who put the policy in place is no longer in that position. Basically, the administration is well aware of the problem and the student government is doing everything they can to make the administration give serious thought to the issue.


Basically, don’t go off rumors. Nobody here can tell you that getting a B+ vs. an A- will deny you from med school or a job. They’re just making that up. Just know that an incredibly amount of people are happy at Princeton and wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.