@maiju15 : Again, no one would admit to it, much like a Berkeley student would never (they love hollering about deflation but their grades, as an elite public, are quite similar to “lower” grading elite privates, with a mean over 3.3). Students love bragging about how “hard” their school is in some way and normally they pull the grade deflation card, but it just isn’t reality, especially outside of STEM. Inflation could encompass easy grading (which a student would never admit to because we love to assume that we worked hard and deserved all of our grades) or watered down content/easy assignments (content deflation is another mechanism of grade inflation. Just make materials really easy for the high caliber student body to tackle. We’d never complain and gladly welcome it).
I take all of this complaining with a grain of salt until I see the materials the student is working with and compare it to elsewhere. I just don’t trust when “perfect” students at a selective school claim their is super hard grading or deflation simply because not everyone makes A’s or worse, some even make gasp…C’s and lower. It makes more sense and is more accurate most of the time to say that elite schools are just much harder in comparison to most less competitive schools.