<p>Well, first of all I was just looking at Brown, and while the grades are high the school doesn’t look like much fun. </p>
<p>Secondly, I was just wondering if anyone who goes to Cornell or has experience with it can support Norcalguy’s statement that the average senior’s GPA is 3.7, this seems really high, I thought that when they talk about average GPA they meant of graduating students, not all students. </p>
<p>So, can anyone say one way or the other?</p>
<p>I just found something else</p>
<p><a href=“Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University”>Career Services | Student & Campus Life | Cornell University;
<p>and while this is for pre meds, it can still show us something about the school.</p>
<p>8% have 3.9+</p>
<p>57% have 3.6+</p>
<p>I don’t have time to analyze that too much now</p>
<p>You have a non-random self-selected sample representing less than 10% of the graduating class. I’m not sure what statistical conclusion you hope to draw from it.</p>
<p>Maybe these links will help? (reliability not guaranteed)
[Phi</a> Beta Kappa Honor Society to Induct Juniors | The Cornell Daily Sun](<a href=“http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2010/04/08/phi-beta-kappa-honor-society-induct-juniors]Phi”>http://cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2010/04/08/phi-beta-kappa-honor-society-induct-juniors)
[Median</a> Grade Report, A&S Majors Cornell Insider](<a href=“http://cornellinsider.com/2010/06/13/median-grade-report-as-majors/]Median”>http://cornellinsider.com/2010/06/13/median-grade-report-as-majors/)
[Grade</a> Inflation Cornell Insider](<a href=“http://cornellinsider.com/2010/06/22/grade-inflation/]Grade”>http://cornellinsider.com/2010/06/22/grade-inflation/)</p>
<p>monydad, good info and the columbia info is interesting,
Based on the actual numbers from the links, there is NO grade inflation at cornell, it is a myth
yale, brown, columbia have average GPAs way higher than cornell.
columbia students are getting an advantage with their way higher average GPAs
columbia is not going to change its grading, or is yale or brown
kinda makes it hard for the cornell students to fairly apply for the same jobs after the graduation, etc, I think
any opinions?</p>
<p>agreed, good links monydad.</p>
<p><a href=“http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeFA10.pdf[/url]”>http://registrar.sas.cornell.edu/Grades/MedianGradeFA10.pdf</a>
I see lots of As and B plusses, so I’m not worried at all. Just put in more effort than the other 50% of the glass and you’re fine. Don’t be paranoid.</p>
<p>Oh by the way, most ivies are on grade deflation too. Even princeton, where bout 30% of the kids get As.</p>
<p>Engineering at cornell, on the other hand, seems a little more difficult.</p>
<p>By the way, 4.0s in high school is really, really easy. Just take the easiest classes, you don’t even need to spend an hour a night on homework + studying for that to happen. Getting a 4.0 while taking the most challenging courses, on the other hand, is pretty hard. You are offered the same choice in college. Take a gander at the median grades, course rank or something like that, talk to friends, see if courses fit your interest. Pretty sure most of us can get there.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how you’re arriving at your conclusions, englandern. Based on gradeinflation.com, the average GPA’s at the different Ivies (with the exception of Brown) are all within 0.1 or so of each other. With the same average GPA but lesser quality of students, Cornell is still as grade inflated if not more than the other Ivies. This is exactly what I’ve been saying all along. How can Columbia have a GPA “way” higher than Cornell when it’s average GPA is 3.42 vs. 3.36?</p>
<p>What’s more interesting is the third link monydad posted which showed that Cornell’s average GPA is rising faster than its peers (no doubt this has to do with Cornell posting its median grades online). In fact, by 2011, Cornell may very well have caught up to Columbia or Yale if not surpassed it. The third link also had some incorrect data (which was noted in the subsequent discussion below the article). The average GPA for CAS students is NOT 3.1. It is 3.1 FOR FRESHMAN ONLY. This is what I was told during orientation when I was a CAS freshman. In fact, in a previous post on this thread, I even noted as much (that the average GPA for freshman is 3.1 but the average for the entire college is 3.4).</p>
<p>Splooge why are you so worried about median grades printed next to your own grades? By now it shouldn’t matter what your parents think of your grades. You should be mature enough to handle it on your own. Instead of worrying about failing, work hard to get the grades you want.</p>
<p>Princeton is by far the toughest Ivy because it is the only school that has actually made an effort to stamp out grade inflation. Princeton grades have been stable or have actually gone slightly down with the new institutional policy to control the number of A’s (grade inflation has its average GPA in 2008 as 3.28 which is less than Cornell’s 2006 GPA).</p>
<p>All other Ivies (including Cornell) have only seen a steady rise in their average GPA’s.</p>
<p>Norcalguy, Do the work and get the grade makes sense. Monydad’s links are just one assessment. I know some other schools disclose median grade data. Do you know if there any other ivy or other school that puts the median grade data right on the transcript? If you don’t do well in a class - it is like a double negative. getting a B- in a class with a B+ median and the median being on the transcript, could be an issue…</p>
<p>lol does that even matter. From what I see from cornell’s median grades, I’m pretty happy. Even my super competitive high school do not have such high median grades for sure among the highest level classes.
If you really consider the average gpa to be indicative of the toughness of a school, then rutgers would be the toughest of all (3.01 gpa in 2006 average). Clearly this is not the case.
Cornell is a pretty tough school, but definitely not as difficult as ppl such as you make it to be.</p>
<p>I think we’re discounting that because of the median grade being printed, students may be working harder to stay above it. That could be why Cornell’s average GPA is rising at such a quick click, the kids are actually working now. Before this change, they had no idea what the average was, so they really had no benchmark for loftier goals, but now they need to show law/Grad schools or Employers that they were on the top of their game in school, which means being above median. Thus, the median is raised and the vicious cycle continues.</p>
<p>That is not grade inflation. Grade inflation is when the work is the same, but the grade rises. Thus, it is usually a “top-down” policy, but this is coming from the students themselves who want the $30+K they pay to Cornell to be worth something, making them students who are above average. </p>
<p>Also, the idea that Cornell has an “inferior” student body is just not true. Above a certain point, testing bias matters more than anything else in standardized tests, and all of the schools recognize that. Cornell and Harvard/Yale’s SAT 25-75% SAT scores are close enough that this difference may be largely from the biases of the SAT as administered, not their actual merits as scholars.</p>
<p>Cornell gpas seem to fit right in the middle of the ivies.
As for the comparison for say columbia, I really don’t think that 0.05 GPA makes that much of a difference and that was taken from 2006
“GPA difficulty” really depends on the course you take, the amount of effort you put in, your ability, etc.</p>
<p>cornell is the same difficulty as other top schools and their student body is on par with all the top schools
Cornell grads are very successful
those are all facts.
cornell has no grade inflation and no grade deflation
still, if Yale or Stanford Univ. or Brown or Columbia or other top schools are reporting more than half of the grades that are issued to their students are straight As, what if anything does that mean for Cornell students where the posts here say As are about one third or less???</p>
<p>^what post says that. Are you also taking into consideration that engineering courses tend to have lower medians and that cornell is an engineering stronghold
And i seriously doubt that more than 1/2 of the kids get straight As in other ivies. If they do, then Cornell has a large number too, given similar gpa median.
This is all speculation again. You are given one number, a gpa median. You don’t know anything outside of it. All of this is just theory. How about going to the school first and listening to those who actually have had an experience in Cornell?</p>
<p>“I seriously doubt that more than 1/2 of the kids get straight As in other ivies”</p>
<p>Look at Yale, Columbia, Harvard, Brown and in particular Stanford."
“More than half the grades given to Brown students last year were A’s, the university reports. The 1.1 percentage-point increase over the previous year puts the figure at 50.6 percent, . . . writes the Brown Daily Herald.”</p>
<p>what do you think?</p>
<p>Brown’s average gpa is up to the 3.7s. Like i said, I was talking about cornell being in the smack middle. Perhaps grading is truly easier there - but then again, employers would know that and that won’t be so good for them to get anything less than that.</p>
<p>But like i said, this shows nothing about cornell.
Oh and, 1/3 of the kids getting As do sound just about right for any college. That’s taking into consideration the engineering courses too, which tend to have lower medians. For there to be anything under the median, there has to be something above median.
If it’s standard with the ivies / most of the top schools, that’s fine with me.</p>
<p>Oh and, in Brown
“This isn’t some type of university wide conspiracy to improve reputation. Grades are calculated on a per class basis by the professor, not the administration. One major factor Influencing these high grades is the fact that all classes at Brown can be taken pass/fail. This means that the majority of people who would be getting Cs are getting ‘passes’ instead which are not factored in to the ‘actual’ grades.”
Quite tricky.</p>
<p>For sure fine.
quite tricky, maybe - but what does it do to students with regular grading such as dartmouth or cornell? does it affect us??
I was just responding to your doubt about any other ivys having 1/2 straight As.
Employers know that Brown or Columbia averages are so high? I hope so. They also have to know that for Columbia, Harvard and especially Stanford which is reported to have an average higher than Brown’s. P.S. I think Columbia last year reported close to 70% As issued. Do they have an engineering school?</p>