Some graduate schools, employers still unfamiliar with grade deflation policy

“I honestly have to say I was totally unaware of that policy,” said Jeffrey Rabek GS ’76, assistant dean for student affairs and admissions at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB).

The University routinely sends out a “statement about [its] grading practices ... with every Princeton transcript,” according to the “Grading Frequently Asked Questions” section on the University website.

That letter never reached his admissions committee, Rabek said, though a number of Princeton graduates have applied to UTMB since the policy was implemented. Rabek explained that transcripts of applicants to Texas medical schools are sent to the Texas Medical and Dental Schools Applications Service (TMDS) which processes the transcript.

“TMDS handles all the paperwork and calculates the GPA,” Rabek explained, and the admissions committee “will never see the official transcript.”

Dee Leopold, the admission director at Harvard Business School, said that, though she has heard about the policy “in general terms,” she has not “delved into it in any great studious manner.”

The change in the grading policy has not prompted her to consider grades from Princeton more leniently, Leopold said, adding that the admissions committee already “took it de facto that people who get into Princeton are very bright.”

Grades from the University are still “compared to the whole pool” of applicants, she explained.

Though some schools might not fully understand the University’s grading policy, Dean of the College Nancy Malkiel maintained that the new practices have not affected graduates’ job and graduate school prospects.

“Princeton students continue to do extremely well in getting jobs and winning admission to graduate and professional schools,” Malkiel said in an e-mail, adding that “there is no evidence at all that our grading policy has had any negative effects on [students’] fortunes.”

Though it is “too soon to know anything” about admissions statistics this year, Malkiel said that Director of Health Professions Advising Glenn Cummings has had “very positive contacts with admission deans at medical schools.”

Some graduate school faculty from other universities who are familiar with Princeton’s grade deflation policy even lauded it as a academic model.

“I am a supporter of Princeton’s policy and wish it were a national standard,” William Sherman ’77, associate dean for academics at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture, said in an e-mail. “We have discussed a similar idea internally within our school ... and have used [Princeton’s policy] as a guideline to fight grade inflation.”

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Statistics provided in “Grading Frequently Asked Questions” also appear to support Malkiel’s claims. The Class of 2008, the first class to earn grades under the new policy for the entirety of their four years at Princeton, was more successful at winning acceptance to graduate schools and receiving job offers than the Class of 2004, the last class not affected by the policy.

Though only 29.4 percent of graduating seniors had jobs lined up in May 2004, 35.5 percent of graduating seniors had already been hired in May 2008, according to the FAQ.

Compared to acceptance rates in 2004, the number of law school acceptances rose by more than two percent in 2008, and the Class of 2008 sent nine more students to doctoral programs than did the Class of 2004.

Asha Rangappa ’96, dean of admissions at Yale Law School, said Princeton’s grading policy is unlikely to affect applicants reviewed by her committee as she receives statistics comparing all Princeton applicants’ grades to the grades of other law school applicants who attended Princeton during the same time period.

“We are able to contextualize a person’s undergrad GPA by comparing it to other law school applicants within the past three years of that person’s graduation,” Rangappa said.

She added that she is “able to evaluate applications from different schools equally … I do see a lot of grade inflation at Princeton’s peer schools, but I definitely don’t think that is hurting Princeton.”

Contextualizing grades and providing information explaining the University’s deflation policy may not be enough to help seniors applying to law school, however.

Dean of the Chicago-Kent College of Law Harold Krent ’77 explained that school rankings put pressure on admissions committees to keep the raw GPAs of admitted students high.

“The U.S. News [ranking] forces schools to be very careful about GPAs, since they are not only reported, but also count for a considerable part of the rankings,” Krent said in an e-mail. “So, while law schools know that Princeton is tougher than Illinois Wesleyan … we have some pressure to ignore these differences in trying to build a class profile.”

Joy Karugu ’09, who is currently applying to law school, said she was afraid she would be compared against a pool of applicants from schools “where half the class has a 3.8 [GPA].”

“It’s not centralized, and you’re being compared against all students in general. It’s not like the school is saying, ‘We’re going to take eight students from Princeton,’ ” Karugu explained.

Though raw grades are emphasized in law school admission offices, employers place more importance on applicants’ Princeton degree than on their GPA scores, Derek Creevey, the chief of staff at the public relations firm Edelman, said.

Though stricter grading at the University “is not an issue Edelman is really familiar with,” Creevey said he “suspect[s] the reputation of the University overshadows if a student received an A and an A-plus, a B or even a C.”

Still, seniors applying for jobs said that grades are key to securing interviews.

“When getting a first-round interview, all they have is a resume and a cover letter, so grades are a big chunk of the data,” Mik Breiterman-Loader ’09 said. “I would venture a guess, just from the way interviewers talked to me, that they don’t really think of a Princeton GPA [as] different than a Harvard GPA or Yale GPA.”

Aseem Mahajan ’09 said that employers’ knowledge of the policy may not translate into easier application processes for Princeton students.

“Some employers may be cognizant of the policy, but I don’t think this will make a big difference when we’re evaluated against students from other schools,” Mahajan explained.