Suggestions to incoming 2014, re: Grade Deflation

ramblin
Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:09:37 +0000

The New York Times blog about college admissions, The Choice, has referenced the NYT’s article about Princeton and grade deflation. In the comments to the blog section, the Dean of Admissions of Yale Law School has posted this:



While I cannot speak for other professions, Princeton’s grade policy should not impact graduates’ law school admissions. The Law School Admissions Council (LSAC) — which compiles the numerical data on each law school applicant — provides, in addition to a student’s cumulative GPA, the percentile rank of that student’s GPA as compared with other applicants to law school from that same institution within the last three years. In other words, a law school admissions officer can (or should) see the difference between, say, a 3.7 at West Point (which would place that student in the upper 90th percentile) and a 3.7 at a school that is prestigious but has a lot of grade inflation (I won’t name names but a 3.7 can be as low as the 60th percentile at some very elite schools).