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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m shocked at how many people on here seem to think that only the best and brightest can succeed at top schools. It may be true that kids need to be that to get into those schools, but most people who have been to one admit that it’s not that hard to get good grades there. [/quote]

I don't get this, either. Have college curricula changed much during the past decade?

I was in a PhD program at Harvard and TA-ing many classes. The idea that these classes are so unbelievably hard that 99.9 percentile kids are struggling to keep up sounds insane to me. It was really not that hard. The kids were smart (especially premeds) but not once in a lifetime geniuses. If you came to classes, read the textbook, did the practice problems, you got an A. A+ was another story, and that was difficult.

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U.S. colleges, on average, have become less difficult and it can be argued that they do not push students as much as they did in the past.  The average GPA at Harvard in 1966 was 2.8.  By 1990 it was 3.3.  Today, it may be nearer to 3.8.  This grade inflation holds to differing levels across the board at colleges.   It is most acute at the most selective.   The same pattern can be seen at schools like UVA. At the same time, studies have shown that the number of study hours has declined.

https://gradeinflation.com/Harvard.html
https://gradeinflation.com/
[/quote]

This is what I thought but now people are reporting from the trenches that their "99.9 percentile kid is struggling to keep up at their Ivy". Maybe kids are more brilliant now?[/quote]

The previous quotes almost all say 99th percentiles (ave ivy kid) work hard but can keep up.  99.9 certainly does not have to struggle to "keep up" --cannot find anyone who said that and if they did they do not have first hand experience. The classes are still hard & much more rigorous than other schools: aligns with personal and family experience ivy/+ as students and professors. 
Kids individually are not more brilliant, but the range of students has absolutely changed! Our kids' college shared data of the SAT range of enrolled students in fall 2020(ie pre-TO numbers because the TO numbers were not out) and then showed the matriculating class 1990, showing percentiles not scores(the sat scores have been recentered). The top 1/4 of students in 1990 were 98-99th%ile, now more than 75% of enrolled students are that. The bottom 25% used to be 90th%ile , now it is 98th. The point the dean made was explaining in part why the mental health is harder --much more competition with so many students who are used to being at the very top, rather than merely 1/4 of the student body.  Plus, they noted that the top 25% of this college in the 1990s soared into medical school easily(1994 national med accept rate was the same as now): the next 25% got in but not nearly 100%, and it was rare to get in if you were below average at this school back then. They have made the grading more in line with "peer" schools(they named other ivies) in the last few years because they want the 98-99th%ile students to all have a shot at med school if they want it considering this group is capable easily: no more C+ average in orgo, now it is a B+/B average, such that over 75% get B range grades in what formerly were "weedouts". My other kid who does not attend this ivy, but attends another T10 and is premed there, has been told almost the exact same thing by the premed advisors: as long as you are not in the bottom 1/4 you can get into medical school easily, they try to make sure LESS than 1/4 get Cs and it is even less once you move past the first 3 semesters, into upper level science/stem. For those in the bottom 1/4 after the first year who still want it, they put them on a slow down summer classes program or a 4+1 slow down and give them resources to have a shot at med school after a couple years out.

TLDR, the students now ARE smarter than the students in the 1990s, and the grade inflation at top schools is purposeful--one or two top schools started it and now all have followed--so that all students who are 99th%iles now can have excellent results even in competitive tracks. [/quote]

Why are there so many more 99th percentile students now so now there is no space for even 95th percentile much less 90th...? Is it population growth? International students?[/quote]

There are just a lot of 99th percentile students. It's just a fact of math. Of the at least 2.5 million students entering college every year in the US, there will 25,000 such students. We're not even at the peak of college enrollment right now because that happened back around 2010.

But of course there is space for kids who are in the 95th or 90th percentile or lower! There is plenty of room because there are close to 6000 colleges in the US. Notice that the top 10% of those make up a whopping 600 colleges to choose from! I wonder if anyone else sees the irony in people complaining that the top 1% of colleges should admit 90th percentile students, when many of these same parents are gunning for the top elite schools and would be dissatisfied with anything lower than a T50 or T100 college for their kids?  [/quote]

That's fine - I am just wondering why it was possible 30 years ago to be at Harvard as a 90th percentile (someone referenced something like this a few pages ago) while today there is not enough space for 99thers and 90thers are entirely out of the question. Were top students spread more widely or is it just population growth?[/quote] Nowadays information regarding college admissions is more democratized, so the top 1% academically talented kids also are likely to have the know-how they need to construct the most competitive applications[/quote]

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