<p>Your grades are up to you and your major. WOWM has it right. </p>
<p>Grade inflation is real but grad schools are aware of average gpa's per school and the smaller the grad program the more they know about your undergrad - and the more they care about what you actually took. Law schools adjust grades - and you can see how if you go through the law school forum. That relates to the LSAT levels. I find that annoying because it puts a huge value on test taking versus real achievement levels in school, but that's how it is. Med school admissions are changing so it's hard to say what they'll look like in 4 years with a new testing regime, with less emphasis - so they say - on traditional requirements. </p>
<p>Grade deflation basically doesn't exist. It's a neat phrase that gets tossed at schools - not at UR. For example, Georgia Tech has lower average grades but their kids get into schools and do well. Princeton has lower grades and yet no one thinks about that. Higher average grades means little. Private schools, btw, tend to have higher averages than public schools. I haven't seen real research on grade levels at UR. I've seen research on some schools where "grade deflation" is brought up a lot. Those schools have seen significant grade inflation, as UR likely has, but they've made an effort to slow it. The typical average at schools used to be closer to a C than a B. My belief is that some kids don't do well and they tend to blame the school. That tends to happen more at larger schools.</p>
<p>My point is that worrying about your own grades is a good idea, but don't worry about the overall level of grades. If you want to major in an area where grading is tough, that will all come out in the wash. You won't be lumped in versus some school where the average is much higher. Usually at this point, people leap to the example of Harvard (or Yale) where the average is now over 3.6. Not applicable because of the reliance on test scores for admission to the big programs like law school. Those kids scored high on the SAT and thus will score high on the LSAT. </p>
<p>As redsoxfan4 notes, it's really about fitting your course schedule to your plans. rsf4 is pre-med and that's a lot of work at any school. But if you're a math major, then you want to take the hard courses partly because that's what you're interested in, partly because any grad school will look at what you take. Some grad school programs are very hard to get in. Econ for example. If you want to get into a top 14 program, you need a ton of math and high grades. If you don't have a ton of math, you will be killed in grad school - that's per my nephew, who is in one of those programs. You'll find yourself in school with a bunch of kids who already have advanced math degrees. (BTW, rankings matter in grad school much, much, much more than for undergrad.)</p>
