- Joined
- Jan 2, 2014
- Messages
- 41
- Reaction score
- 12
Hi all,
My younger brother is applying to colleges (with an interest in pre-med) and I'm not sure what to advise him about choosing certain schools in the local area (New York) that strongly deflate grades. I'll give two examples that come to mind right away based on many people I know in both schools:
1. Fordham University Lincoln Center (City Campus)
-Fordham is a great business/law school but they are relatively new regarding pre-med
-They try to "teach" the mentality that life isn't fair and that you need to be pushed down over and over again so you learn to get up and keep trying
-Based on gradeinflation.com, their average GPA is a 3.17 (based on what people have told me, pre-med classes have harder grading than non-pre-med classes
-Freshman year, the professors are told to very scarcely give out A's and even B's, and that the freshman should be taught that such grades should not be expected (e.g., <10% get A's/A-'s)
-As you get to upper levels, grading becomes a little more lenient but still, about 10% get A's with the majority getting C's and B's. A significant amount of students, even in upper levels fail.
-A B-/B is considered an extremely "strong and well-earned" grade, maybe because in business grades are not nearly as important as pre-med
-For pre-med, some of the upper-level classes they require to graduate have professors that boast about not giving an A in over four years, and only then did one person "earn" an A
-List goes on and on
2. SUNY Stony Brook
-Not as bad as Fordham, but every pre-med class from gen chem in freshman year to biochem 2 in junior/senior year is bell curved with only 10% getting the A and about another 5% getting the A-.
-By junior/senior year, after a large chunk of the useless students get weeded out, and yet the remaining competitive students are still graded on the same bell curve and many students with previously good grades ending their undergraduate careers with C's or even fail (which looks horrible as a downward trend)
-Average is set to C+/B-
From what I gathered, both schools are currently making a push to be better recognized and more prestigious, so they're really going hard with their grading policies.
I know everyone is probably going to say that if you work hard, you will get that stellar GPA, but at these schools that is simply not true. The students I know from these schools are some of the most motivated, driven, and hardworking people I know and they have okay (~3.2-3.5; significantly above the average pre-med GPA at their schools) GPA's instead of stellar GPA's. These also aren't elite schools like Princeton or Hopkins that are apparently notorious for deflation.
So would the best advice be to simply avoid these schools?
My younger brother is applying to colleges (with an interest in pre-med) and I'm not sure what to advise him about choosing certain schools in the local area (New York) that strongly deflate grades. I'll give two examples that come to mind right away based on many people I know in both schools:
1. Fordham University Lincoln Center (City Campus)
-Fordham is a great business/law school but they are relatively new regarding pre-med
-They try to "teach" the mentality that life isn't fair and that you need to be pushed down over and over again so you learn to get up and keep trying
-Based on gradeinflation.com, their average GPA is a 3.17 (based on what people have told me, pre-med classes have harder grading than non-pre-med classes
-Freshman year, the professors are told to very scarcely give out A's and even B's, and that the freshman should be taught that such grades should not be expected (e.g., <10% get A's/A-'s)
-As you get to upper levels, grading becomes a little more lenient but still, about 10% get A's with the majority getting C's and B's. A significant amount of students, even in upper levels fail.
-A B-/B is considered an extremely "strong and well-earned" grade, maybe because in business grades are not nearly as important as pre-med
-For pre-med, some of the upper-level classes they require to graduate have professors that boast about not giving an A in over four years, and only then did one person "earn" an A
-List goes on and on
2. SUNY Stony Brook
-Not as bad as Fordham, but every pre-med class from gen chem in freshman year to biochem 2 in junior/senior year is bell curved with only 10% getting the A and about another 5% getting the A-.
-By junior/senior year, after a large chunk of the useless students get weeded out, and yet the remaining competitive students are still graded on the same bell curve and many students with previously good grades ending their undergraduate careers with C's or even fail (which looks horrible as a downward trend)
-Average is set to C+/B-
From what I gathered, both schools are currently making a push to be better recognized and more prestigious, so they're really going hard with their grading policies.
I know everyone is probably going to say that if you work hard, you will get that stellar GPA, but at these schools that is simply not true. The students I know from these schools are some of the most motivated, driven, and hardworking people I know and they have okay (~3.2-3.5; significantly above the average pre-med GPA at their schools) GPA's instead of stellar GPA's. These also aren't elite schools like Princeton or Hopkins that are apparently notorious for deflation.
So would the best advice be to simply avoid these schools?
