Northwesterly: This is not an attack on you
this is a general response to a rumor that has been bubbling for a while. Here we go:
...They do, however, "correct" GPA, so if you went to Harvey Mudd/Caltech/etc. your 3.2 is worth a lot more than it would be from U of Phoenix...
Do you have any proof?
I have often heard this rumored of many medical schools, but I have never seen the slightest shred of evidence that this is true at
any school, including OHSU.
It might seem easy to "correct" GPA's, but keep in mind there are thousands of universities. Do you really think they have some kind of rank order for each school? Imagine trying to fairly and accurately answer any of the following questions:
- Does "Saint Catherine University" in Minnesota has a stronger biology program than "Saint Catherine College" in Kentucky?
- Does "University of the Pacific" in California has worse grade inflation than "Pacific University" in Oregon?
- Does a 3.1 means more from coming from "Bellevue College" in Washington than it does from "Bellevue University" in Nebraska?
That last question is difficult enough to answer even with data... but lots of schools do not publish data on their school- or department-wide GPAs, so it would come down to speculation and guesswork. And since these figures would change every year, it would have to be recalculated constantly.
When you consider how hard it is to compare even two schools I find it hard to believe that they could fairly and accurately compare even 1% of the 5,000+ universities in the U.S. Why bother, when the MCAT is supposed to be the "great equalizer" that puts everyone on an equal playing field?
I would also note that some of the "prestigious" universities also have widely known problems with grade inflation. Stanford University has publicly acknowledged these problems, and it's in the education journals that the same is true of every other big-name university. I personally wouldn't assume a 3.5 from Stanford meant anything different from a 3.5 from anywhere else.
Keep in mind that the people who work in admissions offices often have masters or doctorate degrees in higher education or education administration, and they are
very well aware of grade inflation in private schools
They are aware that the average GPA at Yale has gone
from 2.56 in 1963 to 3.51 in 2008. Yale was already very selective, very competitive, and very good at teaching in 1963. The students didn't get smarter over the 50 years that followed--they just got better grades. Even the leadership at Yale acknowledged it.
It would be nearly impossible for OHSU to do this even just for Oregon schools. Can you imagine OHSU officially endorsing OSU as a stronger science school than U of O? And then what happens when a new faculty member joins the admissions committee and disagrees, saying he got a top-notch science education as a Duck? Do they revise it?
And then consider the political fallout if the list ever accidentally got made public. All the sudden they lose their donors who went to Reed, because they named Lewis & Clark a better school. I can't imagine them ever putting such incendiary rankings down on paper.
I also wonder whether it would even be
legal to say "You were exactly equal to this other candidate on every other measure, so we rejected you because you got your 3.5 from Portland State and she got her 3.5 from Harvard." That would almost certainly be some form of discrimination. If that's not already illegal, a school would certainly be setting the stage for a lawsuit if they pre-judged an applicant based on the name of the school, especially since there are published academic analyses which show that private schools inflate their grades.
So until I see some proof, I totally regard this as an unsubstantiated rumor.
I would add that I know plenty of students at OHSU whose undergraduate degrees came from every "tier" there is.
The point I am getting at is this: Go to whatever undergrad school you like the best, work hard, and everything will be fine!
