Suggestions to incoming 2014, re: Grade Deflation

randombetch
Fri, 29 Jan 2010 02:51:00 +0000

For example, among the applicants reporting data, a GPA average of 3.53 was enough for a Princeton applicant to receive an offer of admission to medical school. At Stanford, a 3.63 was required. At Harvard, successful applicants had an average GPA of 3.64. At Yale, successful applicants appear to have needed around a 3.71 GPA.



This is faulty logic… I suppose if a school gave every student a 3.0, then a 3.0 would be “enough” to get those students into medical school? Of course a school with an average GPA of 3.28 is going to have an average medical school acceptance GPA less than that of a school with an average GPA of 3.51.

3.53 is 0.25 higher than Princeton’s average of 3.28
3.71 is 0.20 higher than Yale’s average of 3.51

If anything, students accepted to medical school from Yale had to be less “better-than-average” than Princeton students did. It’s not valid to state that because the group of Princeton students accepted to medical school had a lower average GPA than the group of Yale students accepted to medical school, a lower GPA is “required.” (By the way, “required” is a bad word in this context because plenty of students with a GPA of lower than 3.53 got into medical school from Princeton)

PS, if what you say is true, then Stanford dominates Princeton in medical school admission. Their average accepted GPA is a 3.63 while their average GPA is a 3.55. Far more impressive than Princeton’s accepted GPA of 3.53. AND they have a lower average MCAT score? Wow, I wish I had gotten into Stanford.

PPS, thanks for the statistics! I’m very happy to know that the average GPA of a Princeton student who got into a top 5 med school is 3.76, since that’s right around what my GPA looks like.