<p>How is the pre-med placement at Princeton? I’ve heard horror stories from schools like Princeton, Columbia, Penn, and Chicago about how despite the name-brands of the school, the students didn’t fare as well in med school admissions due to the lower GPA’s they got. I’d probably major in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering at Princeton. How is the GPA inflation/deflation there? </p>
<p>Also, how is the management consulting recruitment at Princeton? I always hear about top finance firms coming to recruit there, but how about the big consulting firms, namely Mckinsey, Bain and BCG? </p>
<p>I can’t comment on medical school, but here’s what I can say (from a recent alum’s perspective):</p>
<p>Grades: Princeton’s a harder grader than, say, Yale/Stanford, but I don’t know how it compares to your other schools. It’s probably worth pointing out that at any school, the chem / chem eng GPA will probably be significantly lower than the school average (actually, at Princeton the difference may be smaller since the “grade deflation” policies primarily hit the humanities).</p>
<p>Consulting firms: As sherpa noted, consulting is a very well-traveled path out of Princeton. You’ll have a harder time NOT being swept up in it than worrying about firms coming to campus. A good number of my classmates went to M/B/B.</p>
<p>Premed is difficult at any top school, but grade deflation doesn’t affect your science GPA at Princeton since it really was an attempt to curb down massive differences between humanities and sciences in grades awarded.</p>
<p>I have a slightly different take than decillion. While it is true that grade deflation hit humanities harder then science, IMO, grade deflation is a huge and complex issue which manifests itself in ways not directly linked to the 35% A “guidelines.”</p>
<p>For example, my D just completed her first year of engineering. In EVERY science/math/computer class (physics, chem, Calc, COS), the classes were packed with students who had achieved 5s on the AP exams, yet we’re taking intro classes. (There are plenty of good reasons to not use the AP results to “test out” of a intro class; but many students were so far beyond what was taught in the intro classes, they were simply “protecting” their GPA.)</p>
<p>Specifically, intro COS was packed with seriously experienced programmers competing with students who knew how to turn on a computer and not much else. The curve would have two peaks - each peak representing prior experience with the subject matter. Guess which peak got the 35% prize? Same was true with the other intro science/math classes.</p>
<p>So, while it is true that grades in science/math were less impacted then humanities, there has been no study of which I am aware that evaluated the effect of grade deflation on course selections. Grade deflation means that each student is NOT evaluated based upon course mastery; rather, each student is evaluated against each other. (How else can one explain mean quiz scores in physics/math routinely being in the 40% range. Poor unprepared students? Poor teaching? Or, perhaps, the need to create tests which create wide grade distributions on which curves can be built.)</p>
<p>Once you get past foundational classes, the playing field evens. But is it too late to recover? I don’t know.</p>
<p>This deserves some context, because it was not the culture I saw at Princeton. I was a CS major at Princeton who had taken AP Computer Science in HS who then took COS 126 (the intro CS class). The biggest reason I did this was not to protect my GPA but because intro courses at Princeton typically go way above and beyond high school AP classes in breadth and rigor.</p>
<p>COS 126 covers more any HS computer science curriculum does, and if you want to be a CS major, it’d be foolish (even if manageable) to skip this class. The same was true of intro math and physics classes: for every one person in the class who’s trying to protect his GPA, there are ten others who’re there because these are legitimately difficult classes.</p>
<p>“Grade deflation” or whatever is, IMO, an easy scapegoat when you’re used to being the smartest person in the room for the last 17 years of your life and now see B’s and C’s on your transcript, but the biggest reason people get their butts kicked at Princeton is not because of grade deflation or grade protection but rather because they’re at Princeton. </p>
<p>@stemit - My son (BSE) had a similar experience first year. He took one math that he could have placed out of because of an AP course, but he was really happy he had taken it after all was said and done. Princeton teaches the material at a MUCH greater depth than AP courses cover. As you said, there are plenty of good reasons not to place out - perhaps even for the more advanced students it was not entirely “GPA protection” but rather hesitation to assume readiness for the next course in sequence for those students in your daughter’s classes. The first year at Princeton can have a certain intimidation factor for many students. </p>
<p>With absolutely no previous programming experience my son found COS extraordinarily difficult. He heard from an instructor that Yale teaches the same material over 2 semesters rather than how it’s done in 1 at Princeton. In hindsight he would have waited to take this course second year and spent some of his summer before second year pre-learning some of the basics to be able to focus more on some of the more advanced concepts. It remains his only low mark on his transcript. Live and learn, I suppose, but BSE candidates without programming backgrounds would probably benefit by learning some of the basics of Java in advance. </p>
<p>In terms of math test/quiz grades, I think the kind of marks you describe could be found at many university math departments. Generally my son’s test marks were belled up (ie- his first math test mark was 66% which became an A). Having won every possible math award in high school he came home after first semester saying that he thought he was good at math before going to Princeton. But again, I don’t think this is an uncommon scenario at many post secondary institutions. I do know that incoming students at Princeton without significant and advanced math preparation are discouraged from pursuing math as a major (my son heard this from one of his profs). One of his closest friends (who is a math concentrator) came with having completed multivariable calculus somewhere around grade 10 or 11. My son says some of the students from Europe are even more prepared than that. This may be less evident in some other departments, but every department has some students who are truly exceptional. </p>
<p>The great thing about being around such advanced and talented people is that he was really pushed to find out exactly what he was capable of, and by the end of second year he actually had a really good GPA (it was just over average after first year). He learned better study and organizational habits and his profs/TA’s/friends helped him grow and develop in many areas. I’m not sure this environment benefits everyone in the same way, but for him it has been overall very positive so far. </p>
<p>I’m not certain his experience to date is one of “recovery” (assuming you mean grades) since it’s still too soon to tell. But I do know he heard often that first year is the most difficult and so far that assertion appears to be true. </p>