Just how cut-throat is UCSD?

Colleges & Universities University of California - San Diego
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<p>@AndrewL: It’s true. When speculating about this, we’ll always have to make assumptions. :P</p>

<p>I believe prestige is more of a manner of the quality of the program rather than the competition. Rigor and “weeding out competition” isn’t prominent at some schools. As I’ve said, there are a few Ivy leagues that cuddle you in their arms and hand walk you through undergrad with easy, inflated grades.</p>

<p>Your suggestion about having all schools set the average at 3.0 is a bit harsh to some schools. If all the students at the school earned a 4.0 (idealistically hypothetical speaking) and you lower the average to a 3.0, that is still grade deflation. On the other hand, if all the students didn’t try at all (too busy with clubs to study) and all earn a 2.5, there would be some grade inflation to boost that average up.</p>

<p>Prestige is not a good indication of the actual difficulty of getting grades. </p>

<p>@Same difference: That’s a shame that even the social sciences might have some grade deflation. :confused: Have you taken other lower division sciences as well? I heard there is A LOT of grade deflation in those, especially lower division chemistry classes.</p>

<p>@Oyama: You are correct. I’m not using the definition, as defined in classical economics. Sorry to waste your time with that beautifully written explanation.</p>

<p>But I’ve already mentioned that I’m not referring to inflation, as in the rise of a GPA over the “set mean”. I’m talking about the overall, purposeful decrease of the GPA average at a school.</p>

<p>Let’s take this unrealistic, but relevant hypothetical example:</p>

<p>Let’s say Cal had 100 students who were all exactly the same. They had the same brain and studied the same and have the same sleep/life habits. They all take their exams and score 95%-96% on all their tests. Their GPA’s, before the curve, would be a 4.0 (Let’s assume an A+ doesn’t mean anything different from an A). However, Cal wants their average GPA to be a 3.3. So, they curve the test up, so that a 96% would result in a B+ (3.3 GPA). That is what I mean by grade deflation. Is their average GPA higher than the other schools like UCSD? Oh yes. Were they nicer with their curve in past years? Oh yes. There is a rise in the average GPA. But when you purposely lower the GPA like that, that is what most refer to as grade deflation.</p>

<p>On the other hand, let’s say these students all attended Brown. They all scored 83% on the exam because Brown’s admissions office looks for students who pursue amazing extracurriculars, not “study all day in one’s room and memorize everything in the textbook” which appears more frequently at Cal (I’m not saying this happens to all. There are certainly a plethora of well rounded people at Cal too). The test is then curved down, so that an 83% is a B+, which is still a 3.3. But this is an inflated GPA.</p>

<p>I was using simple economic terms to try and clarify what I meant (as there is a lot of ambiguity in mere posts without diagrams of my logic), not to use economics as one of my arguments about the existence or nonexistence of grade deflation at Cal. Sorry if I offended you by misusing and butchering the elegant vocabulary of Economics. :P</p>

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<p>Well if one school has people who slack off and earn a 3.0 while another school works their butt off and gets a 3.0, then eventually it’ll even out in the long run since people will find students from the hard working school is more “prestigious.” I didnt think that having a 3.0 average for schools would be harsh at all. If anything, I thought it’ll make things fairer in the long run.</p>

<p>I was using Oyama’s definition of inflation and I figured that was what everyone else would believe is inflation. (Econ major as well) In a sense, we’re all correct if we used our own definition of inflation. Just misunderstood each other’s interpretation :)</p>

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<p>So using that explanation, I can induct a prescription saying to attend the easiest school you get into.</p>

<p>It’s not that simple. You can also use econometric models to account for differences in informational data using Fixed-Effect (FE) hierarchical regressions, assigning a different FE for each school in your sample. </p>

<p>[Fixed</a> effects model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_effects_model]Fixed”>Fixed effects model - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>Say you predict that a 4.0 at CalTech is a true 4.0, but that a 3.5 is somewhere between a 3.5 and 4.0 elsewhere; you can set a FE to account for variability in difference of measures. This would require all schools to disclose their exact distributions, however, which is too time- and energy-consuming.</p>

<p>What people do is use a heuristic (much like all the ones described in psychology and behavioral economics) used to pull information from data. People lump certain schools together and make an inference based on what they know about those subsets of schools (MIT, CalTech = grade hard) and they account for these differences when they compare them with non-group schools (Public = grade easy) and use informal implicit comparisons to tease apart information given some data.</p>

<p>However, this is a much more difficult assumption to make than to merely model simple normal distributions with lawful estimators like my earlier explanation.</p>

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<p>Well, just because a school has grade inflation doesn’t mean it offers a quality education nor does it offer opportunities to succeed.</p>

<p>But yes, my definition is quite relative compared to other schools. I was using my own heuristic when defining what school is grade inflated and what school is grade deflated. There isn’t a definite answer.</p>