Is Duke undergrad a joke?

[darkjedi]

I never believed that GPA's from different colleges could mean such different things until I talked to my friend, who went to another college.

I graduated with a top percentile GPA for my school. Unfortunately, it's borderline for most medical schools. My friend told me that this percentile translated to a much higher GPA at his school, which was actually lower ranked than my school.

I wanted to see if this was the case anywhere else.

I found that at NYU, 30% of students get above a 3.68. [1] Seeing this annoyed me because at my school the cutoff for merely the top 15% of students was around 3.68. Meanwhile, at NYU the top 15% of students have a cutoff GPA of 3.81.

However, what absolutely pissed me off was Duke. At Duke, 25% of students have a 3.79. [2] 15% of students have a 3.87 or higher.

I know it sounds stupid to be whining about grades, but let's be honest - this is absolutely ridiculous. If you're going to give 1 in 4 students at your school a 3.8, then what's the point of even grading your students? How is this any different (morally speaking) from those diploma mills overseas where you become an "MD" after handing them cash?

Somebody please tell me I'm reading this website wrong because otherwise I think I'm going to turn into one of those guys from the airheads commercials and just explode with frustration and rocket up into the roof.

1: https://www.nyu.edu/life/resources-...raduation-and-diplomas/graduation-honors.html
2: http://registrar.duke.edu/student-records/academic-recognition-and-honors

P.S. If you're premed and you want to go to the best medical school possible, do whatever you can to go to Duke, even though their tuition is highway robbery.

95% of my undergrad had below a 3.6 GPA and I managed to get into a good medical school. It really boils down to who you are. Don't blame other's for your own mistakes. The real moral of the story is don't go to ****ty grade deflationary schools *ahem BU*.

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[Chimichica]

So you all are referring to numerical grade cutoffs as a direct impact on class rank? Ugh this post is so all over the place for me.

Ok so you're saying if Duke profs have an A as 85% and nyu profs have an A as 95% then there is a large discrepancy on what is actual top 10% and what is not. Ok I think I get it now. Now I get why OP is upset, but who really cares. I know it's not fair but nothing in Merica' usually is. So do your best at your school and honest that's all you can do. But I wasn't aware it was that bad. But again I personally will find other things to worry about. I mean eventually we could see the complete abandonment of the grading scale and see just pass/fail.

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[freak7]

I thought most professors were moving to the hard-cutoffs and not curving. At least, that's how it was for my Orgo and Psych classes. Bio 1/2 was a ****show.

Oh god, I wish.

 

[ditritium monoxide]

OP, this grade inflation at most top schools has been well known for a while. If you feel like getting even more upset, read this: lower GPAs at top schools also get more of a pass, given that med schools see gpas from there as having been acquired by competing with high caliber students. I'm surprised you never knew about this before applying.

I feel like the longer I live in this world, the less I like it

Yes, it's generally a pretty sick world we live in in lots of aspects. You can either get upset about this and lose all hope in your career path, or you can learn to truly accept it, strive to better yourself, and try to achieve the highest potential you can. If it makes you feel better, there are plenty of people who go to state schools for undergrad and med school and come out as successfully matched into a specialty. The best part about their path is that, depending on their schools, their student loan debt is much lower most med students'. I advise you to keep your head up and choose the second option.

I don't think you should be knocked for being upset about this as you found out about it so recently.

 

[efle]

OP, this grade inflation at most top schools has been well known for a while. If you feel like getting even more upset, read this: lower GPAs at top schools also get more of a pass, given that med schools see gpas from there as having been acquired by competing with high caliber students. I'm surprised you never knew about this before applying.




Yes, it's generally a pretty sick world we live in in lots of aspects. You can either get upset about this and lose all hope in your career path, or you can learn to truly accept it, strive to better yourself, and try to achieve the highest potential you can. If it makes you feel better, there are plenty of people who go to state schools for undergrad and med school and come out as successfully matched into a specialty. The best part about their path is that, depending on their schools, their student loan debt is much lower most med students'. I advise you to keep your head up and choose the second option.

I don't think you should be knocked for being upset about this as you found out about it so recently.

Lower GPAs SHOULD get a pass, the 3.3 crowd performs like you'd expect from the national 3.9 crowd. There's nothing unfair going on with inflation at schools like Duke.

 

[Swish16]

Should've tried to go to Duke undergrad smh.


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[kb1900]

OP, this grade inflation at most top schools has been well known for a while. If you feel like getting even more upset, read this: lower GPAs at top schools also get more of a pass, given that med schools see gpas from there as having been acquired by competing with high caliber students. I'm surprised you never knew about this before applying.




Yes, it's generally a pretty sick world we live in in lots of aspects. You can either get upset about this and lose all hope in your career path, or you can learn to truly accept it, strive to better yourself, and try to achieve the highest potential you can. If it makes you feel better, there are plenty of people who go to state schools for undergrad and med school and come out as successfully matched into a specialty. The best part about their path is that, depending on their schools, their student loan debt is much lower most med students'. I advise you to keep your head up and choose the second option.

I don't think you should be knocked for being upset about this as you found out about it so recently.

What Is the argument here?? A 3.0 engineering Princeton grad probably gets a 4.0 at every single damn institution in the country rofl

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

The real moral of the story is don't go to ****ty grade deflationary schools *ahem BU*.

 

[ditritium monoxide]

What Is the argument here?? A 3.0 engineering Princeton grad probably gets a 4.0 at every single damn institution in the country rofl

Princeton is different. There's no denying the grade deflation and rigor of Princeton along with some other schools (WashU, Uchicago, JHU, etc.), but it seems like certain top privates do inflate quite a bit, as claimed by some professors who teach at these schools.

It's their prerogative, and the OP should know that nothing he can do will change that.

 

[ditritium monoxide]

Lower GPAs SHOULD get a pass, the 3.3 crowd performs like you'd expect from the national 3.9 crowd. There's nothing unfair going on with inflation at schools like Duke.

Eh, not sure how true this is for students at every state school. I'd wager that students from better state schools get into med school much more often than students from no-name state schools, by virtue of the former group of schools having more applicants, a stronger student body, and more general recognition. In sum, not too sure that med school applicant pool reflects the national crowd in terms of pedigree.

These better state schools (UVA, UCLA) are known to have very low average gpas compared to most top privates and be very tough. You could say that the caliber of the student body at those places doesn't measure up, but that doesn't definitively prove that the schools with grade inflation are harder. I suspect OP went to a state school of this category.

I'll admit, some of this is speculation, but overall I'm just skeptical (but accepting) of how fair/unfair the inflation is.

And I realize certain top privates are known to deflate, like JHU, UChicaco, WashU, etc. I wonder if the students from here, relatively speaking, get a pass.

 

[efle]

Eh, not sure how true this is for students at every state school. I'd wager that students from better state schools get into med school much more often than students from no-name state schools, by virtue of the former group of schools having more applicants, a stronger student body, and more general recognition. In sum, not too sure that med school applicant pool reflects the national crowd in terms of pedigree.

These better state schools (UVA, UCLA) are known to have very low average gpas compared to most top privates and be very tough. You could say that the caliber of the student body at those places doesn't measure up, but that doesn't definitively prove that the schools with grade inflation are harder. I suspect OP went to a state school of this category.

I'll admit, some of this is speculation, but overall I'm just skeptical (but accepting) of how fair/unfair the inflation is.

And I realize certain top privates are known to deflate, like JHU, UChicaco, WashU, etc. I wonder if the students from here, relatively speaking, get a pass.

When I say national I mean the national body of medical applicants as provided by the AAMC facts tables. I plotted WashU applicants vs National applicants and saw 3.3 graduates perform on the MCAT equivalently to the 3.9 applicants nationally.

Hence grade inflation makes a lot of sense - it's bad enough that a person capable of a decent (say low 30s) MCAT will often get a ~3.3GPA due to the extremely competitive environment. If you removed inflation and had low 30s students earning ~2.8 GPAs, it would become extremely unfair and stupid to enroll at these universities.

 

[efle]

Princeton is different. There's no denying the grade deflation and rigor of Princeton along with some other schools (WashU, Uchicago, JHU, etc.), but it seems like certain top privates do inflate quite a bit, as claimed by some professors who teach at these schools.

It's their prerogative, and the OP should know that nothing he can do will change that.

Should also note Princeton is changing - they recently did away with their anti grade inflation policy that was capping the number of As at ~35%. My best guess is that they noticed they were losing a lot of accepted students to Harvard for the sweet sweet A- median grades and decided they needed to stop their deflation.

 

[Lucca]

When I say national I mean the national body of medical applicants as provided by the AAMC facts tables. I plotted WashU applicants vs National applicants and saw 3.3 graduates perform on the MCAT equivalently to the 3.9 applicants nationally.

Hence grade inflation makes a lot of sense - it's bad enough that a person capable of a decent (say low 30s) MCAT will often get a ~3.3GPA due to the extremely competitive environment. If you removed inflation and had low 30s students earning ~2.8 GPAs, it would become extremely unfair and stupid to enroll at these universities.

Competitive grading is stupid and should just end though. Hard cut-offs are the rule rather than my exception at my school and it is a much better system imo. Professor decides what they think should earn what grade, end of story, no competition

 

[efle]

Competitive grading is stupid and should just end though. Hard cut-offs are the rule rather than my exception at my school and it is a much better system imo. Professor decides what they think should earn what grade, end of story, no competition

That's just a curve with an extra step - it's how genchem was run here. Set a static cutoff based on previous years' performance that you expect will be cleared by X% of testers. The distributions between years remained remarkably stable for us. I think it does help foster cooperation, because you're now competing against the prior year students instead of your peers in class, but it remains "competitive grading" where your performance is indexed against the type of people at your school instead of some objective cutoff for quality.

Same gist as the MCAT really. You "aren't curved" against your peers...but it remains a competition based score.

 

[Lucca]

That's just a curve with an extra step - it's how genchem was run here. Set a static cutoff based on previous years' performance that you expect will be cleared by X% of testers. The distributions between years remained remarkably stable for us. I think it does help foster cooperation, because you're now competing against the prior year students instead of your peers in class, but it remains "competitive grading" where your performance is indexed against the type of people at your school instead of some objective cutoff for quality.

Same gist as the MCAT really. You "aren't curved" against your peers...but it remains a competition based score.

That's just the thing. A true cutoff does not depend on expectations of who will clear what. My professors have explicitly stated: The whole class can earn an A, or nobody can earn A, either way I don't care. The cutoff is decided by the professor based on what kind of performance they feel deserves what grade. If the whole class is doing exceedingly well, you assume you are testing too easily and then just make the next exam harder. That's the kind of competition that should be encouraged at the university level: competition with yourself to improve, not against others.

 

[efle]

That's just the thing. A true cutoff does not depend on expectations of who will clear what. My professors have explicitly stated: The whole class can earn an A, or nobody can earn A, either way I don't care. The cutoff is decided by the professor based on what kind of performance they feel deserves what grade. If the whole class is doing exceedingly well, you assume you are testing too easily and then just make the next exam harder. That's the kind of competition that should be encouraged at the university level: competition with yourself to improve, not against others.

Again, though, they move around the difficulty (and, I'd guess, set them in the first place) based on THEIR students. If they taught the nearby community college student population instead, vs MIT students, I don't buy for a second that the score cutoffs per grade and/or difficulty would be placed and held the same.

After all, everyone COULD get a 30+ MCAT score one year. Everyone COULD have gotten an A+ in my genchem. Or, everyone could get a 15 and a D. The possibility existing doesn't preclude competition based scoring.

 

[Lucca]

Again, though, they move around the difficulty (and, I'd guess, set them in the first place) based on THEIR students. If they taught the nearby community college student population instead, vs MIT students, I don't buy for a second that the score cutoffs per grade and/or difficulty would be placed and held the same.

After all, everyone COULD get a 30+ MCAT score one year. Everyone COULD have gotten an A+ in my genchem. Or, everyone could get a 15 and a D. The possibility existing doesn't preclude competition based scoring.

Well yes, it will depend on the student body. You can't really change that. But within the same classroom, competition is counterproductive to learning imho.

 

[efle]

Well yes, it will depend on the student body. You can't really change that. But within the same classroom, competition is counterproductive to learning imho.

Totally agree. Its much better to be competing against the people that went before you than the people going through it with you! Just doesn't mitigate the challenge being higher at some places than others the way inflation does.

Dream setup is nice inflated static cutoffs, best of everything

 

[Lucca]

Totally agree. Its much better to be competing against the people that went before you than the people going through it with you! Just doesn't mitigate the challenge being higher at some places than others the way inflation does.

Dream setup is nice inflated static cutoffs, best of everything

Yes that is the dream

 

[AirplaneFruit]

Pretty sure Duke, being an elite school, has students who would blow you and your school out of the water.

If you go to Princeton, MIT, UChicago, JHU, etc then feel free to complain. If you go to Ohio State or something, you need to calm down.

 

[NimbleNavigator]

Pretty sure Duke, being an elite school, has students who would blow you and your school out of the water.

If you go to Princeton, MIT, UChicago, JHU, etc then feel free to complain. If you go to Ohio State or something, you need to calm down.

LOL SDN is so pretentious sometimes. If you're serious and not trolling then I feel bad for you son.

 

[efle]

LOL SDN is so pretentious sometimes. If you're serious and not trolling then I feel bad for you son.

Any response to what I posted earlier on the first page?

 

[darkjedi]

LOL SDN is so pretentious sometimes. If you're serious and not trolling then I feel bad for you son.

yea except it's true and i say that as someone who went to mid-tier college at best

 

[kb1900]

LOL SDN is so pretentious sometimes. If you're serious and not trolling then I feel bad for you son.

"Goro is on my ignore list
Affirmative action is racist
Clinton had Seth Rich assassinated"

lol

 

[Nommonnom]

I'm surprised no one mentioned outcome based evaluation of education, i.e., the quality of the education as measured by MCAT which measures the knowledge and thinking skills that are the point of undergrad.

If I were an adcom I'd probably completely ignore GPA in favor of MCAT; so many ways to game GPA, the only thing it reliably measures is how much you tried to get a good GPA and how much your professors tried to give you a good GPA.

 

[queenoftheclouds]

This thread is frustrating to read. Coming from a top-10 private school myself, it's upsetting to think that people will discredit the work we put in. Getting an A in a science class is freaking difficult, considering the students at the top of our class are highly competitive and hard working. Hell, everyone in the damn class is intelligent and hard working.

I don't know what GPAs you're looking at, but the average med school matriculant from my school has a lower GPA than the national avg, but our MCAT average is above the 90th percentile. The MCATs speak for themselves.

 

[Mansamusa]

This thread is frustrating to read. Coming from a top-10 private school myself, it's upsetting to think that people will discredit the work we put in. Getting an A in a science class is freaking difficult, considering the students at the top of our class are highly competitive and hard working. Hell, everyone in the damn class is intelligent and hard working.

I don't know what GPAs you're looking at, but the average med school matriculant from my school has a lower GPA than the national avg, but our MCAT average is above the 90th percentile. The MCATs speak for themselves.

I wouldn't call it upsetting, but if it makes you feel better, I went to one of the top 10 deflating schools, got into med school with my 3.3 sGPA, and so far the workload has been less than undergrad (especially without working part-time). I think I've adjusted better than many of my classmates and haven't gotten less than a 96 on anything (5 weeks in) *humblebrag* My college has definitely prepared me well even if my low GPA made getting in rougher. So even if people discredit your work now, your hardwork in college with be good prep for med school

 

[DingoPingo]

pride

 

[piii]

OP is a joke

 

[phonyreal98]

Yes. #GTHD #CoachKLooksLikeARat