“So, which colleges inflate their grades and how do I get in?” There’s always a certain prestige to snatching victory from the jaws of defeat. This reputation for rigor means that good grades, honors, and other various distinctions from a college like this are more highly valued than the same things from a less rigorous college, both by potential employers and everybody else in the know. It incentivizes students to constantly perform and learn to the best of their ability, and also increases the rigor of courses at a college. Grade deflation, however, tends to increase competition. It also encourages students to branch out of their specialized interests and explore new things - a French literature major would be way more likely to take the plunge into plant pathology if he knew that doing so wouldn’t tank his GPA. It discourages college students from taking a cutthroat, aggressive attitude towards their peers and their academics, and lessens the incentive for academic dishonesty. Speaking in very general terms, grade inflation decreases competition. We won’t cover that here, but if you’re interested, a quick Google search should turn up some interesting results. But for those who do, the reasons are quite diverse there’s also been an ongoing dispute over whether one approach is better than the other. Well, not every college does things to intentionally shift their bell curve towards one end or the other. “Why do colleges do this? Can’t they just hand out grades normally?” This was an intentional move to deflate grades and make their classes more competitive - under this rule, even if a student managed to do A-quality work, they would still be awarded something lower if they were not in the top 35% of their class. For instance, a few years back, Princeton had a rule where only the top 35% of students would be able to earn A’s (don’t worry, it’s not a thing anymore). Grade inflation and deflation are not phenomena related to student performance as much as they are related to college grading policy. For the rest of this article, we’ll use grade deflation in this sense since very few colleges actually actively grade deflate. If the median is in the failing range, it deflates.īut in recent years, the term “grade deflation” has evolved to mean “not as grade inflated” in some cases, so you’ll be hearing some people call a C-median “grade deflated” as well. The litmus test for a grade-inflated or grade-deflated college is their median GPA: if the median GPA of a college is in the A’s or B’s, it inflates its grades. On the other hand, if you attend a grade-deflated college, this means that your college grades more harshly a decent number of students at this college are making low C’s or failing their classes. If you attend a grade-inflated college, this means that this college tends to hand out high grades to a lot of their students and that a plurality (or even a majority) of students are consistently making A’s or B’s in all of their classes. Grade inflation and deflation both have to do with the way colleges like to hand out grades to their students. “Okay, so these words - what do they mean?” Well, as always - if you’ve got questions, we’ve got answers. So what do these words actually mean for you, the pre-college applicant? And how should this affect your college choices? If you’ve been researching colleges lately, you’ve probably seen these two terms often - “grade inflation” and “grade deflation.” They’re words that college students love to react to, whether it’s with celebration or with gritted teeth.
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