relationship between SAT scores and intelligence?

[David Sklansky]

I find your comments hard to believe. Do you stand by them comparing, lets say, Georgia Tech and Cal Tech?

[Philo]

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I find your comments hard to believe. Do you stand by them comparing, lets say, Georgia Tech and Cal Tech?

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No, I can't compare Georgia Tech and Cal Tech because I have from no first-hand knowledge of grading standards from either school, nor any statistics from those particular schools.

I certainly wouldn't go so far as to generalize across all schools, but speaking from my personal experiences in higher education (which I've been in for over 20 years as a student, professional academic, and administrator), it seems clear to me that many schools not considered top-tier for an undergraduate education do not have the same level of grade inflation as Ivy League schools and many top-tier private colleges. I have had numerous discussions with colleagues from different institutions around the country about this very topic which seem to confirm this as well.

From a quick search on the internet here are two examples of grade inflation from Ivy League schools: The Dean of the College at Harvard reported that for the 2002-2003 school year 47.8% of grades for undergrads were either A's or A-'s. The American Academy of Arts and Sciences reported that in 1997 43% of grades at Princeton were A's, and only 12% were below the B range. I saw the same grading practices at Amherst College as an undergraduate.

I was a doctoral student at Columbia University, where I taught undergraduates and also worked in the Dean's Office and read the internal reports from Ivy League institutions about grade inflation. I have taken classes at eight different colleges and universities, served on graduate school admissions committees at both Columbia and UCLA, and worked as an academic counselor for the College of Letters and Science at UCLA.

The toughest grading institution I have ever taken classes at was the University of Louisville. It was much harder to get an A at U of L than it is for undergrads at Amherst, Columbia, Harvard or Princeton to get an A.

[luckyme]

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The toughest grading institution I have ever taken classes at was the University of Louisville. It was much harder to get an A at U of L than it is for undergrads at Amherst, Columbia, Harvard or Princeton to get an A.


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So I can follow this, is there any prior selection that needs to be taken into account?

I need to kill off this -
All high school grads with an A average go to Harvard.
All high schools grads with a B or lower average go to Smavard.
Harvard awards a higher percentage of A's than Smarvard.

I'm not sure what you meant by "much harder". generally, or you personally or ??

thanks, luckyme

[David Sklansky]

"The toughest grading institution I have ever taken classes at was the University of Louisville. It was much harder to get an A at U of L than it is for undergrads at Amherst, Columbia, Harvard or Princeton to get an A."

Almost certainly doesn't matter. I'm betting the Harvard courses are much harder. Especially the science and math courses. They probably go through twice as much stuff and in more detail. Most Louisville calculus B students would flunk out of freshman calculus at Harvard, if I had to guess. In fact I will specualte that the elite schools give out a lot of A's because they don't want to give the wrong impression to outsiders. If they gave out the typical percentage of B's some people wouldn't realize that their B students are usually better than average college's A students.

[Philo]

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"The toughest grading institution I have ever taken classes at was the University of Louisville. It was much harder to get an A at U of L than it is for undergrads at Amherst, Columbia, Harvard or Princeton to get an A."

Almost certainly doesn't matter. I'm betting the Harvard courses are much harder. Especially the science and math courses. They probably go through twice as much stuff and in more detail. Most Louisville calculus B students would flunk out of freshman calculus at Harvard, if I had to guess. In fact I will specualte that the elite schools give out a lot of A's because they don't want to give the wrong impression to outsiders. If they gave out the typical percentage of B's some people wouldn't realize that their B students are usually better than average college's A students.

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If you're generalizing in saying the Harvard courses are much harder you're wrong. In fact, I took calculus at U of L and it was an incredibly difficult class even for very good students. Getting a B in that class was absolutely comparable to getting a B in calculus at Columbia, and I would suspect Harvard as well. And no, they don't go through twice as much stuff. The idea that Ivy League classes are always more difficult is just a misconception. No one flunks out at Harvard unless they just don't do any work. Harvard is not in the business of flunking out students.

What do you base these conclusions on?

[David Sklansky]

I was just guessing. If you know for a fact that I'm wrong, I can't argue. But what you are saying doesn't make sense. I remember the students from my high school who went to Harvard and those who went to, let's say, Penn State. The difference in intelligence was pretty huge.

[Philo]

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I was just guessing. If you know for a fact that I'm wrong, I can't argue. But what you are saying doesn't make sense. I remember the students from my high school who went to Harvard and those who went to, let's say, Penn State. The difference in intelligence was pretty huge.

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How did we get to the claim that students who go to Harvard aren't more intelligent than students who go to Penn State? I never said that, and in fact I completely agree that students who go to Harvard are on average more intelligent than students who go to Penn State.

I'm making a very specific claim about grading practices, which is that there are many classes at schools that are not considered top-tier schools in which it is harder to get A-range grades than it is in comparable classes at top-tier schools. I don't think that claim implies anything about the relative intelligence of students at top-tier versus non top-tier schools.

[furyshade]

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I was just guessing. If you know for a fact that I'm wrong, I can't argue. But what you are saying doesn't make sense. I remember the students from my high school who went to Harvard and those who went to, let's say, Penn State. The difference in intelligence was pretty huge.

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How did we get to the claim that students who go to Harvard aren't more intelligent than students who go to Penn State? I never said that, and in fact I completely agree that students who go to Harvard are on average more intelligent than students who go to Penn State.

I'm making a very specific claim about grading practices, which is that there are many classes at schools that are not considered top-tier schools in which it is harder to get A-range grades than it is in comparable classes at top-tier schools. I don't think that claim implies anything about the relative intelligence of students at top-tier versus non top-tier schools.

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i think the point david is making is that the grading practices are differnet at harder schools because they realize as a whole the education is more difficult, so it wouldn't be fair for someone going to a worse school to have a signficantly higher GPA just because they took easier classes. obviously this wont be true for every school or every class, but i think as a whole it is solid reasoning.

[joker122]

philo i have no experience here but if you look at it logically: why does a degree from harvard open more doors/mean more to just about everyone than a degree from some huge state school? it isn't because of how hard it is to get in to harvard, it is the quality of education the school bestows on the degree holder. the academic demand of a school is a function of the quality of education. put another way, you can't expect a school to administer excellent education without it being very demanding for the student. it's just not possible.

that, or everyone in the world is wrong about what a degree from a top school means. is that what you contend?

[Philo]

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philo i have no experience here but if you look at it logically: why does a degree from harvard open more doors/mean more to just about everyone than a degree from some huge state school? it isn't because of how hard it is to get in to harvard, it is the quality of education the school bestows on the degree holder. the academic demand of a school is a function of the quality of education. put another way, you can't expect a school to administer excellent education without it being very demanding for the student. it's just not possible.

that, or everyone in the world is wrong about what a degree from a top school means. is that what you contend?

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I don't think there's any disagreement here about the quality of education an undergraduate receives at a school like Harvard. A student who goes to Harvard and works hard will undoubtedly receive a great education.

But grade inflation at Ivy League institutions in particular (and I think at many other top private colleges) is a well-established phenomenon, and I think that students coming from schools not considered top-tier are often at an unfair disadvantage when competing for, say, admission to top law schools, because their grades are not as high, when in fact it may have been just as difficult, and in some cases even more difficult, to get A-range grades at those non top-tier schools.