@surelyhuman - assuming your data is correct, this whole conversation is moot.
I never thought I’d say this:
If Chicago’s median GPA is now 3.6, and almost 40% of students have over a 3.7, Chicago’s grading climate is starting to look like… Brown’s!
@JBStillFlying - if business econ (which is, supposedly, an “easier” econ track, and will be super popular) takes off, this median GPA might only creep up, right?
Man, a median grade of about an A- at the University of Chicago. I never thought I’d see the day!
(It makes me a little jealous, JB. If Chicago now had the #16 incoming class like in my day, instead of the #2 they have now, you still gotta figure the #16 class from 1990 could pull what - maybe a 3.4 avg at today’s Chicago? That’s a big bump from the ~3.1 median in my day!)
Just to make sure we are all reading @Surelyhuman's data correctly, 37% of the class gets over a 3.7 (A-). That is NOT half the class.
3.6 has been confirmed on other sites (although everyone might be accessing the same bogus data LOL).
Zimmer does NOT tell the faculty how to teach their courses and that includes college courses. Faculty are free to set the grade distribution how they see fit. So if there is upward creep, it's due to faculty, not to Zimmer.
UChicago is NOT starting to look like Brown. Brown's median GPA is 3.75 or higher.
Bus. Econ. is theoretically easier in that it doesn't require calculus or higher, but if you look at the courses offered it still has a lot of rigor potential. Still, it's an example of how they have broadened their offerings so that everyone has more choice and gravitates to that which is interesting and, perhaps, more "doable."
Not sure what the class in your day would have been able to achieve. Best to go with the data. In 1999 (per gradeinflation.com) the average grade awarded was 3.26. Now, the average grade awarded is a 3.6 (there might be difference between "average" (if mean) and "median" - I am using them interchangably). The school size was 4,000 or so in 1999 (going off memory) and now it's 75% higher. Not sure if that matters but thought I'd toss it in there. Usually you see the "average" decrease with size but not in this case. That's because they worked to improve the quality of the class as well as its size. But better-fit majors and courses have also helped, no doubt about that.
Harvard’s median is 3.63. So, Chicago’s median is starting to look more like (gasp!)… Harvard’s
And, yes, I agree, Zimmer didn’t “tell” faculty to increase grades (although he may have “told” the administration - the group he oversees - to improve retention rates).
The grade inflation probably exists for all those reasons you state, as it does at Harvard or Brown or Stanford. It just took a little longer for those cultural factors to hit Chicago. But, if surely’s data is right, hit Chicago they did.
As an example of that, here’s a (then young, now more senior) professor at Chicago talk about the pressure his faculty peers put on him to give out higher grades:
“When I started, I was discouraged from giving lower grades on the grounds that it would severely damage undergraduates who were not concentrating in Classics or history and were intending to apply to professional schools,” [Professor Jonathan Hall said.]
I think JB is right - the push for grade inflation probably comes from the faculty (who may be motivated for many reasons to go in this direction - not the least of which is that a younger faculty grew up in a time of budding grade inflation…)
@JBStillFlying My Dad says the data from his recruiter is pretty reliable. His company is a bulge bracket Wall Street firm that actively recruits at both schools and used GPA to quickly screen applicants and then verifies with transcripts.
That Prof. Hall started his career during the “bad old days” of supposedly “no grade inflation!”
The more that college GPA’s start to converge at the high end of the distribution, the more crucial things like standardized scores become in sorting through the applicant pool. If everyone applying to law school is a 3.8-3.9 and they all have great “softs” - how else to make a decision if not using LSAT score?
And it’s consistent with sources supposedly from inside the College for graduating class of 2018, per the website that rhymes with “Shred it.” Google “What Grade Deflation? It’s Grade Inflation Now” but the gist is that median is 3.62, 75th is 3.8, and 25th is 3.4.
@JBStillFlying - Professor Hall’s comments (from 2005) seem in line with the general trend at Chicago. A combination of faculty willingness/peer pressure and improving class strength make grade inflation irresistible.
It’s just fascinating to me that Chicago’s median GPA is now the same as Harvard’s. I really never thought I’d see the day.
(Interestingly, faculty can combat grade inflation, if they so choose. Look at Princeton some years back - the faculty simply set harsher curves in all the classes. But, as the lone school to do this, the faculty eventually needed to capitulate. Making the school “harder” also seemed to make student climate unhappier. For many reasons, the faculty gave up, and P’s grades have crept up slowly again.)
So who are the lone top holdouts from grade inflation? Is it just MIT, Caltech, and the military academies? I used to put Chicago in that category, but the Chicago faculty’s appetite for higher grades seems more similar to Harvard than it does to West Point.
If there’s no significant grade deflation, then there’s no need for law schools, including Chicago Law, to adjust Chicago student marks, thus rendering nonsensical both my assumption that this was happening and Cue’s assumption that deflation was the sole explanation for Chicago’s relatively lesser representation at the top law schools - if it really is lesser.
The analysis, as always, must begin again. Sisyphus had it easy compared to our work on this forum.
If median GPA at UChicago is high yet the total number of admits at YLS and HLS are small, may be many of the most successful students in terms of GPA are choosing not to apply to graduate school at all since their exit options look pretty good even without graduate school?
Unless we know the number of applicants to these schools and their median GPA, it will be hard to come up with any credible explanation of what is going on.
My guess here, and this may be backed up by @JBStillFlying - is there is some lag in the numbers.
And by that I mean, the Chicago cohort applying to law school in 2017 or 2018 primarily graduated Chicago’s college in 2015 or 2016 (most work for a year or two before law school).
The avg. gpa was probably a little lower in 2015 than 2019.
If grade inflation has indeed hit to this extent, and most Chicago students have a 3.6 GPA, I’d expect Chicago’s numbers to improve in the future.
The aba data from 2015-2017 bears this out a bit. Chicago’s avg. GPA there was around 3.57. I’d expect, say, the 2019-21 band to be noticeably higher than that, if law stays as popular for Chicago grads. Maybe in the 3.65 range?
With grade inflation rivaling most peers, maybe that surge in Chicago placement is coming…
Oh and @surelyhuman as you may have some inside info from your recruiter friend, what are their impressions on Chicago’s median GPA, and Chicago generally? Was there some surprise about the median GPA? Is the recruiter taking more notice of chicago now than in the past?
@Surelyhuman - spot on. We don’t know the application numbers to those schools.
@Cue7 - The article was dated in 2005 and Prof. Hall was speaking of his arrival on campus as a young(er) faculty member probably a good while earlier but feeling pressured by his seniors to grade easy. Now, I’ve had my suspicions of the humanities fields for awhile (sorry Marlowe!) including from my time back in college in the 80’s. At any rate, he was NOT talking about any newfangled inflationary trend but something that existed long before the “new and improved” College. Even in the 60’s grade inflation was around (in fact that’s when the article believed it got started).
Is Harvard’s GPA really only 3.6? Somehow that seems low. The LSAC data show them at 3.69’ish. My guess is that now they are a bit below Brown but not by much.
@JBStillFlying - Hall arrived at Chicago in 1996, I believe. So it looks like the faculty peer pressure he faced to grade high started during the Sonnenschein era. Maybe it started a little before that, too. That all sounds right - there were lots of forces at play in the college in the mid-late 90s that pushed it in this direction.
The key differentiating factor: it seemed to hit Chicago later (grade inflation has often been discussed as starting in the Vietnam war era, with faculty pressuring each other to give higher marks to their students).
Maybe late 80s was when it really hit at Chicago?
It also varies across majors and departments, for sure. Still, it seems like that 3.6 median GPA will simply continue to creep upward.
I took a lot of English and humanities courses in the 60’s. I can tell you that A’s were hard to come by. I liked getting them from time to time, but it was not something I expected or actively strove for: the ones I got came when I really smoked it on a paper or an exam. That was sweet when it happened. Some courses just didn’t give you the scope to do that, and you got a B as a sort of default grade. I got a lot of those, and some C’s, and even one D - in German. Grades are only grades, and they’re an imperfect measure of what one has got from a course. I got a lot out of German. A mediocre or poor grade didn’t break my spirit. I didn’t even care that much. Usually I figured it was just or that the course just didn’t give me an opening to do my best. You can’t always hit the home run. Even the greatest hitters fail most of the time. In a course one looked for the sweet spot and chance to hit a pitch in one’s wheelhouse. It didn’t always happen, it seldom happened, but when it did, it was sweet indeed. And something was gained even when you walked back to the dugout. It was an experience and you had learned something. When everyone gets on base and the default is an A there’s not much point in the game.
^ @Cue7 at #273, it might, but then 3.8’s won’t make Dean’s List :neutral: Highly doubtful that senior Classics faculty members were taking GPA curve advice from Sonnenschein LOL. The “new core” didn’t even go into effect until end of the millenium. Also, that econ dept. head seems to have missed the memo. These are all local decisions based on faculty wanting their subjects to be popular (among other motivating factors). Preprofessional types stereotypically won’t take your course as an elective if you are known for being a tough grader. That was as true in 1996 as is is today.
On the other hand, in researching Harvard GPA data I happened across this little tidbit on the Pre-Law page:
"Your Academic Record
In the admissions process, your academic record is a very important element. Therefore, be sure to concentrate in a subject area that you enjoy and do well in. Admissions officers know from experience which departments have strong academic reputations and which courses have high and low curves. . . . "
There is also this:
“There is no “right concentration” that is recommended for preparing for law school. Law schools are looking for a diverse group of students from a variety of backgrounds. They are interested in students who have selected courses that are academically challenging and that have cultivated and developed the student’s ability to make inferences, reason logically, and analyze and present complex information in a condensed and clear manner."
This applies to everyone, not just the Harvard kids. IMO, another argument for why UChicago students shouldn’t worry about those “low GPA’s.”
@marlowe the average GPA at UC in the 60’s was in the mid 2’s! I seem to recall the push for STEM/premed/econ and other sexy majors beginning around my time in college (in the 80’s). One trustee scholar told me she was being pressured - by the trustees! (or their designated “advisor”) - to switch from English to biochem! (then a popular choice at my college for pre-med). Seriously! (she declined to).
@Cue7 At my Dad’s firm, UChicago seems to be doing quite well. It still lags Penn, Harvard etc in terms of total alums because the surge has been relatively recent, but the biggest change from what my Dad tells me is that the firm is recruiting more at Chicago now because they are getting better yield at Chicago than before because the demographic profile of the students seems to have changed and the firm has also expanded its outreach efforts to more schools.
Two other things
This recruiter noticed that there seem to be more and more UChicago kids with familial ties within the firm (kids of Booth alums?). This gives these kids an inside track and that might also be increasing the yield at Chicago?
My Dad also speculates, based on limited anecdotal information that as diversity imperatives have accelerated at Harvard, Yale and Princeton, Booth school alums are proportionally having greater success sending their kids to Chicago than HYP alums are having with their alma mater (so more legacies are getting denied at HYP now than ever before).
Looks like Chicago is currently accepting a greater percentage of legacy banker kids that apply than HYP is? Given the importance of ED at all schools and the uncertainty of SCEA admission at HYP, some of these HYP legacy kids are pivoting and choosing other schools in the ED round. This may also be impacting the banking yield at other schools and broadening the base. The competition from the big tech firms like Google, Facebook, Amazon etc is also forcing banks to broaden their recruiting efforts to more schools.
I really think there’s more to admissions than just stats like @surelyhuman just mentioned even for law school. So how about the children of judges in the District of Columbia? Or children of politicians? They come into play here and that LSAT and GPAs alone don’t explain it. Otherwise my fully in the competitive range oldest daughter might have gone to Harvard instead of Vanderbilt Law School…
@JBStillFlying - no no, I wasn’t saying Sonnenschein asked Prof. Hall to inflate grades, just that what Hall describes (in 96) was in the midst of the Sonnenschein era. It’s possible a faculty push for grade inflation started in the early or mid 90s.
@Waitlistedparent - I’m sure law schools have other institutional priorities than just GPA/LSAT - they just tend to be fewer in number than, say, colleges. Someone who went through the law admissions process can comment more, but I’ve heard under-represented minorities and first gen students are more coveted by law schools. Probably, there are some number of “development” cases too. I don’t think elite law schools covet other attributes (like military service or college athletics) the way elite business schools do.
Also, let’s not forget, we are talking about the tippy top schools here. It is hard to get into Harvard Law or Yale Law. It’s why, at least in 2016 and 2017, only about 7-8% of Chicago pre-law applicants were able to achieve this feat!
(I do wonder, with more grade inflation, that number might go up to 12-15% in 2020 or 2021.)