Your high school grades are incredibly important for college admissions, and your grades in college in turn matter if you want to go on to medical school or law school, or for recruiting in certain industries. Thus students are under a lot of pressure to get high grades, so they can secure their futures, in college and beyond.
Over time, this pressure has caused grade inflation at many schools, both at the high school level, and in college. In this article we’ll explore what this phenomenon is, its reverse of grade deflation, and how both can impact your time in high school and college. Let’s get started!
So, What is Grade Inflation?
Grade inflation is a practice where the scores students receive on graded assignments are artificially heightened. This process began a while ago; originally C grades were literally average, and assignments were graded and curved on that basis. There was no shame in getting a C, and it was indeed that most assignments would receive one.
As college admissions slowly grew more competitive, grades became more important in high school, and pressure increased for students to receive high grades. Beginning at more elite and selective high schools, teachers began raising the average grade they curved to. More and more students received As and Bs, and admissions officers had to adjust.
This soon spread, as societal norms around grading changed. No longer was a grade of C acceptable; now on a hundred point scale, it is expected that there should be a clear rubric, and that all students should have the chance to earn a perfect score. This is a reasonable goal, but also means that there are new standards for admissions. Once everyone could earn an A, admissions officers began expecting that all incoming students do so with a full sweep of perfect grades.
This happened at the college level as well, beginning once again at the top schools, and then spreading through the rest of academia. This has impacted admissions to PhD programs and Medical schools, with admissions officers there again expecting high or near-perfect GPAs.
The Curve
As a brief note, we’re going to explain what grading to the curve means, since curved grading is often where grade inflation is seen. When a test is assigned in college, the numerical grade you receive on the test is only partially related to the final grade you receive, especially if the average grades are low. Instead, a median or average point is picked and pinned to a certain letter grade, and final grades for the test are recalculated from there.
I’ll provide an example from one of my Calculus classes in college. On the first midterm, the average score was a 67/100. This was curved to a B. Thus student who would have ordinarily gotten D/D+ grades received Bs, while students who would have received C grades instead received As. This can get more extreme; on the second midterm the average score was a 32/100, and the test was again curved to a B.
Thus the more generous a curve is when grading, the more it can be associated with grade inflation. The less generous the curve, the less inflated the grades are. Students, of course, generally prefer a more generous curve, and advice on which professors curve generously is hotly discussed when it comes time to pick classes.
Finally, this is where the phrase “wrecking the curve” comes from. In the above example, the highest grade on the first midterm was an 82; thus there was no issue for fairness when raising everyone’s grades on the curve. If, however, one student gets a perfect grade while everyone else fails, how do you curve the scores fairly? Some professors use a median grade instead of an average for this reason.
What is Grade Deflation?
Grade deflation is the flipside of grade inflation, but is also something of an invented term. It is a continuation of grading policies which have fallen out of favor elsewhere, leading to lower average grades being awarded at a school relative to other institutions.
This, understandably, often proves less popular with students and parents, as societal expectations for what grades will be awarded for what level of performance. Even schools known for grade deflation have more generous policies for grading than they did in the past; their grades are only deflated when compared to their contemporaries.
Finally, understand that some of this is subjective; while there are definitely schools which extensively practice both grade inflation and deflation, most institutions fall in the middle of the extremes, and it is up to the will of the professor how generously assignments are graded.
How Grade Inflation Impacts High School Students
The good news is that the impact of grade inflation for high school students is limited, so long as your school is consistent in its approach to grading. This is because colleges judge your high school grades in context; which is to say the grading policies of your school influence how admissions officers think about your own grades.
Let’s say, for instance, you’re one of the top ten students by class rank at your school, but your unweighted GPA is a 3.4. While this is a quite good GPA, colleges see many perfect 4.0s from applicants. When reviewing your school’s grading policies however, they may see that grading is done on strict and rigid scales, and that in the context of your school, you are quite the high performer.
This information is conveyed through the School Profile. This is a document compiled by your high school counselors, and tells admissions officers everything they need to know about your school’s grading policies.
While colleges want you to do well in difficult classes, what doing well means depends on the context of your high school, and colleges understand that. You still should do your best to succeed in these difficult classes; earning a perfect 4.0 in a school known for grade deflation is impressive indeed, and admissions officers will take note.
How Grade Inflation Impacts College Students
For college students on the other hand, grade inflation and deflation can be much more impactful. For law school, medical school, and PhD programs, your GPA is a key metric used to determine your eligibility for admissions. Most merit-based scholarships also rely on GPA metrics for students to continue receiving their aid awards. Thus, maintaining a high GPA in college is of paramount importance for most students.
This requires a change in approach from what most students are used to in high school. Advanced degree programs don’t care if you took the hardest courses. They don’t have the time to sift through course descriptions and understand the nuances of difficulty at the thousands of colleges across the US. Instead, it is assumed all courses at a college offered at a certain level are equally difficult.
Thus you receive no bonus for taking honors courses in undergrad (save for the advanced understanding of the subject matter you may receive). Indeed, this focus on GPA alone, causes many students to take easier courses in order to preserve their high GPA, and to improve their chances of admission.
Students who attend schools which are more notorious for grade deflation are therefore sometimes seen at being at a disadvantage when it comes to admissions. Students at Princeton, well known for being a deflationary school, recently petitioned that all transcripts include additional context. They want transcripts to display not just the student’s personal grade in a given course, but the median grade for that course, so their performance may be understood in context.
While Princeton still sends many students on to top law, medical, and doctoral programs, the feeling of unfairness and increased competition caused by deflationary grading practices is very real. In turn, schools which are known for practicing grade inflation are sometimes seen as giving their students an unfair advantage, though in both cases all institutions insist that their grading practices are fair, and all students receive the grades that they have justly earned.
Colleges With Grade Inflation and Deflation
Of course, what you really want to know is which colleges practice grade inflation and which practice deflation. It is difficult to answer this question concretely, as the amount of grade inflation fluctuates between departments, professors, and classes at any given school. We will, however, go through some top schools, and whether they are known for grade inflation or deflation.
Colleges with Grade Inflation
This is not a complete list, but we will give notes for some of these schools we think are relevant:
- Brown. Brown’s open curriculum gives students great flexibility to pursue their interests, and also to avoid any courses which may hurt their overall GPA.
- Harvard. While Harvard does offer many challenging courses, they were one of the schools originally at the forefront of grade inflation, and remain there.
- Yale. Harvard and Yale are similar in many respects, and this is one of them.
- Dartmouth. The median grade at Dartmouth is an A-.
- Duke. The median GPA at Duke is a 3.5.
- Northwestern. I will admit that I am biased as a UChicago alumni, but Northwestern is known to practice grade inflation.
Note that there are many challenging courses at these schools, and you are not guaranteed high grades just from attending. Instead, the average grades at these schools are notably high, out of step with other top schools.
Colleges with Grade “Deflation”
We have put deflation between quotes because all colleges, even the hardest, practice some level of grade inflation. The schools on this list simply do slightly less of it than the schools on the list above.
- Princeton. Princeton is notorious for being tough graders, and takes a certain degree of pride in that fact.
- Caltech. As with most other things, Caltech bucks the national trends here.
- MIT. MIT used to be harder, but has been softening in recent years, and is not so strict as past reports make it out.
- UChicago. Much like MIT, UChicago has been softening, and may soon lose its fierce reputation.
- Cornell. While not as harsh as Princeton, Cornell is known to have strict grading practices.
Note that the actual difference in average grades between the schools on the top list and the bottom list is quite small, and you may find very strictly or very loosely graded courses at any college. These are the averages, and a lot of detail is obscured in that.
Final Thoughts
Grade inflation is not something many schools like to talk about, much less admit to. Yet it plays a major role in many students’ time in high school and college, and we thought it wise to explain what it is, and how it may impact you, both now and in the future.
Grades are a very important part of what colleges look at in making admissions decisions, but they are only one part of a much larger picture. If you want to hear how we can help you become the kind of student colleges want to admit, schedule a free consultation today. We have a depth of experience helping students with every aspect of college admissions, and we’re always happy to hear from you.
