Poll shows GPA range of quintiles

If "Jesus Loves All Quintiles," as the Facebook.com group declares, then apparently he even loves students with grade point averages below 2.67 — the upper echelon of the lowest quintile.

As of September 2004, students have been able to see on the Registrar's website how they rank within their class. Since then, however, the grades that constitute each quintile have remained unknown.

This week, The Daily Princetonian conducted an unscientific survey of students on their GPAs and quintile ranks. Sixty-one freshmen and 36 sophomores responded. Results from juniors and seniors will be included in tomorrow's paper.

When asked to release what GPA range constitutes each quintile for each class year, Dean of the College Nancy Weiss Malkiel declined this week to disclose the information. "We will not release that information," she said in an email. "We never have and do not intend to."

The quintile system sorts student GPAs into five categories, each quintile constituting 20 percent of all student GPAs in a given class year. The first quintile is the top 20 percent while the fifth quintile is the bottom 20 percent. Quintile ranks are calculated at the end of each semester based on the students' cumulative GPAs.

Results from the Class of 2009 indicated that GPAs from 4.0 to 3.75 fell in the first quintile. The GPAs in the second quintile ranged from 3.67 to 3.425. The third quintile consisted of GPAs from 3.4 to 3.24. The fourth quintile was from 3.2 to 3.025 while students with GPAs below 3.0 were in the fifth quintile.

The exact points where one quintile ends and the other begins is unknown. These figures provide only approximations of those points.

The Class of 2008 results painted a slightly different picture. While GPAs in the first quintile were largely similar to those of the class of '09, ranging between 4.0 and 3.727, the spread of the second, third and fourth quintiles was larger, indicating that more students received a lower GPA.

Indeed, the average GPA of the surveyed students was 3.53 for freshmen but 3.40 for sophomores.

For the class of '08, the second quintile ranged from 3.68 to 3.5, the third from 3.46 to 3.26 and the fourth from 3.15 to 2.9. GPAs below 2.67 were reported to be in the fifth quintile.

"The purpose of the quintile ranking is to enable you to assess your performance for all courses you have taken at Princeton in relation to the performance of the rest of your classmates," the Registrar's office said in a 2004 email to the student body.

"In the context of the new grading initiative, the faculty decided that providing a quintile ranking would give you more information to help you interpret your GPA."

Some students who participated in the survey did not know their quintile ranks and had to look them up on SCORE.

"It's better than I expected," Hannah Grimm '09 said after she checked her rank. "I feel much better. I was terrified."

Many students who participated in the survey expressed interest in the information. When told the purpose of the survey, Boris Pivtorak '09 said that he was glad someone was finally getting the information together.

Some students, though, said that they did not know their quintile ranks and did not want to find out. Still others were hesitant to provide information, even when assured of anonymity.

In both class years, the number of participants decreased with the quintile rankings. A total of 32 in the first quintiles for '08 and '09 filled out the survey, while only six in the fifth quintiles responded.

Quintile information is available only to the students themselves, academic deans, directors of studies and the Registrar's office staff. It is not released on transcripts.

— Princetonian Staff Writer Jonathan Zebrowski contributed reporting to this story.