PLEASE HELP GRADE DEFLATION !!!!!!! thank you ~?

Question

Hi ,


Well i want to trasnfer to Boston U but i heard that they have Grade Deflation ...I don't understand that ? Like what is wrong about it ? Could you please answer ! Thank you so much !

Answer 1

It generally means that the grades they give students are not accurate indicators of their true performance as students.

For a long time, expensive private schools gave out grades that were higher than what students actually earned. The purpose of this is two fold:
1) to make the student feel better about himself/herself (and by extension, feel better about paying high tuition and therefore stay at the school) and
2) to look good for employers and/or graduate schools.

Although Boston Univ seems to be trying to discourage or change that trend, it doesn't really matter unless all the schools do it. You would actually want grade inflation, which is where you get a higher grade than you deserve. Why Boston Univ would give out lower grades is beyond me. It seems to me this would discourage students from going there. At the end of the day, the higher your grades, the better, regardless of whether you got a higher grade than what you deserved. The only thing that really matters is what your transcript says, which is ultimately what influences parents, employers and (if you plan on it) graduate schools.

P.S. I went to summer school at Boston University and frankly, I wouldn't recommend going there. As large and impersonal as it is (and expensive), you would be better off going to another private school to get a better education. It is also in a VERY bad part of Boston (got my bicycle stolen within 2 days of buying it). Like Firefly said, you would be better off at Boston College or another similar school.

Answer 2

Grade deflation means that they are toughening up on grades - they are now giving lower grades for the same level of work than they did in the past. A number of schools are trying to do that now because grade inflation had gotten out of hand - almost everyone was getting As and Bs. Other than the fact that many students freak at any grade less than an A, there isn't anything wrong with it. Since it is generally known that they are doing this, it won't hurt your chances of getting into a graduate school in the future.

Answer 3

It means they will not give out A's when you really deserve a B, a B when you really deserve a C, etc. It means they'll stick to their guns and say, for example, only the top 30% of the class will get A's and no more. It means the competition will be fierce among your peers to get the scarcer A's.

This is because in the past, some of these universities have been accused of Grade Inflation, where grades were artificially high, in other words, they were accused of being too soft on grading their students. This cheapens the value of grades from those schools. They (the schools) are trying to correct that.

Answer 4

A couple corrections to above answers:

BU is in a very nice part of Boston proper - right next to the Back Bay, right by the river trails, with the tony Brookline suburb directly south and Cambridge visible across the river. Yes, there is occasional property theft on campus (like on any large urban campus), but to call the area unsafe in general is frankly absurd.

Grade deflation is going on at many Boston schools. Harvard has been repeatedly raked over the coals in recent years for its ridiculous number of A's handed out to students basically to avoid hurt egos. The effects of that have spread unevenly to other local big universities.

Boston College is a nice place with bright and attractive students, looks like something from an A&F Fall Catalog... but basically its the opposite of BU in terms of setting, student body diversity, and convenience to the city. Their only similarity is their mutual ridiculous price tags.

Answer 5

boo, come to BC..

I guess grade deflation is when they calculate your credits and your GPA at BU would be lower than what it is at your school now. Again, I stress... boo, come to BC...