Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion college acceptance rates

My D attends a STEM college (Harvey Mudd) where the average GPA at the middle of sophomore year (when they pretty much finish the technical core courses) is 2.8. Kids with GPAs in the higher 3s (eg, maybe 3.5 or higher? Not sure, my D's grades weren't high enough to get one...) actually get a letter from the college president they call a "get a life letter" that says it is great that they are doing so well, but make sure they are enjoying college and having a little bit of fun. GPAs go up to about a 3.3 average by graduation, but compared to most other top schools there isn't much grade inflation. They have had only 7 students (maybe 8 as of this last graduation) graduate with a 4.0 average in the history of the school. So... not every college is giving in to that level of grade inflation.

Efforts to reduce grade inflation are often unpopular with college students, who say their chances to get good jobs and especially to gain admission to graduate programs will be hurt.
Yet Harvey Mudd graduates earn more on average than those from any other college, according to Payscale, $143K at mid careeer. Schools with large engineering programs and a preponderance of men do tend to have alumni with higher average earnings.

FYI, in 2014 Mudd had more women graduate with engineering majors than men.

That is really interesting. It was 4% in my class. Back in the olden times.

Are you basing this on first-hand knowledge, or is this just what you are assuming?

My nephew graduated from Yale a few years ago. He is anything but a conformist, and for his application, he wrote his essays in about an hour.

My children are too young for college, but our high school routinely sends dozens of kids to the Ivys and other selective schools. Through family friends we know lots of them, and they run the gamut from shy introverted kids to the leader that everyone gravitates towards.

Grade inflation is real at some of these places though. My nephew said it was hard to get an "A" at Yale, but it was much *harder* to get a "C".

First hand knowledge, my DS15 is is H.S. My older DD is at university. My kids attend/ed at a top "highly ranked" public high school that sends kids to Ivy's and top schools. The pressure at our H.S. in these top schools is intense. I know kids who gets these top scores, I see what it takes out of them and how hard they work. And what the teachers expect and how they grade.

My husband is a professor & many of my friends are also professors at a large public university. I hear frequently about how while the GPA to get into the school is getting higher and higher, the kids are less and less repaired for college level work despite taking oodles of AP's.

"Hard" can mean
(1) Few people do it.
(2) Doing it takes a lot of effort.

By the first standard, it is not difficult for Yale students to get an A at Yale, where the average grade is estimated to be an A-. And why should we need to rely on an outsider's estimate? Why doesn't Yale publish this data? Academics are supposed to disseminate knowledge, but they are not forthcoming about what their institutions do.

Faculty scrutinize grading trends
BY JANE DARBY MENTON
Yale Daily News
October 11, 2012

Bostonian,

I have no basis to dispute the researcher's assertion about the grades given at Yale, but from what I read, the caliber of the average Yale student is very different now than it was 50 years ago. While there have always been some with an easier path to admission (legacy, famous, and/or rich), the rest are highly talented these days. Charles Murray discusses this in some detail in one of his books.

bluemagic,

It's interesting because my DD is also 15, and in a similar type of high achieving public high school. Granted, she is only starting her sophomore year, but in a school with 1800 students, DD is near the top (possibly at the top) of her grade . This was quite frankly a pleasant surprise for us.

Her friends include most of the top performers. They are busy, but I wouldn't call them stressed. I know several of the kids' families share our philosophy that if the child puts forth the effort, they will do fine when it comes to college admissions, even though no specific college is a guaranteed admit. We are also confident they will do fine in the college they are admitted too. Our friends with children in college uniformly report that college is easier than our high school, regardless of whether the child is attending Harvard, MIT, Cornell, Tufts, Carnegie Mellon, etc.

Where I see the stress is in the kids that are not in the top 5%, and where the parents are pressuring the kids to perform at a level that they cannot. These parents force the kids to take the honors classes when they should not, and the emphasis is on grades, not effort. These are the girls that I see suffering from eating disorders, or worse.

Isn't this stress talked about in David and Goliath, where you get a really hardworking MG, is top of her class at highly ranked high school, gets to Princeton and then has a breakdown.

If you have more of these than the PG student, like the nephew above who went to Yale. Compliant generally means MG, doesn't it? I thought MG were usually identified because they were really hardworking, teacher pleasing etc while the PG was bored and staring out the window.
In that other topic with the article about types of intelligence. Maybe in the next decade they do away with interviews and have you figure out a strategic puzzle. If you can think out of the box, you get in.