(no subject)

[sillygoosegirl]

Harvey Mudd College and grade inflation... not as good as we thought?

http://www.gradeinflation.com/

Comments

[moana314.livejournal.com]

This study (as far as I can see) doesn't specify that the GPA refers to classes taken at Mudd. For all we know, it could be a rise in off-campus classes taken that results in the rise in GPA. I know that I've gotten A's in nearly all of my off-campus classes, and that's really brought my GPA up. I'm not sure if this has any effect on the data presented, but I can only imagine that as the humanities restrictions decrease, the average GPA will increase for that reason. I think I'll talk about this with Dean Guy, since it's a pretty interesting topic.

[sillygoosegirl.livejournal.com]

That could be a possibility. However, I think most off-campus classes Mudd students take are introductory-level, so I'd think we'd tend to get good grades in them regardless of the campus. I got really good grades in my off-campus classes, but I did just as well in my on-campus hums.

[camlost.livejournal.com]

Bear in mind that to graduate, you need 128 units, and for those taking the minimum, at most 5 courses (15 units) will be off campus, so only abour 12% of your classes are off campus. If you look at the grade inflation of pomona over the same period of time, you get +0.4 GPA, which would account for only around 0.05 GPA units for a typical Mudder. Of course, this isn't a rigorous calculation, but it seems like it should be mostly accurate.

Also, since around 1980, Mudd's median GPA has increased around 0.2 to 0.25 points, so it's unlikely that Mudd's GPA has been soley affected by Pomona's (or other 5Cs, assuming they are similar to Pomona) GPA.

I'd be interested to hear anything you discuss from Dean Guy.