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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]nope, former classmates i knew who went loved it (they graduated 3-5 years ago).

There is now massive grade inflation with average gpas around a 3.8 and less competition.  As a result, it is less intellectual than before (which is good and bad)

A lot of investment in student life experiences like the new student center on campus plus world class ramen and other restaurants near campus.

Still need to further gentrify baltimore, however.  [/quote]

Colleague is a Hopkins alum and his son just got in ED. The sibling goes to ivy where the other parent went. Both are in stem. Both schools have very similar average GPAs: about 3.75-3.8, in other words the same as most ivies. Colleague still knows professors there and they were able to meet with some, ask a lot of questions: the professors still push the kids with challenging coursework and the averages on former "weedout" course midterms is still low (below 70% correct), but the difference is instead of 5% Ds, 30% getting Cs, 40-45 %B and 20-25% A, they have shifted to be more in line with other elites, in order for the GPA for med, law, whatever to be inline with peer schools. In other words, only the bottom 10% of the course will be assigned a C and in many upper level STEM, Cs are almost nonexistent. A student who ends the semester right around average will get a B+, and the top 30-45% get A- or above. 
My student is at a different non-ivy T10, physics major, and it is not only eerily the same "spread" in exam based courses, the deans talked about the purposeful shift at freshman parents weekend and put up data comparing the average gpa to ivies currently as well as the (re-normed) SAT averages 1990 compared to fall 2020(not TO) explaining that the school now has 75% of students 98-99th ile and used to have 25% that high. The bottom line: almost all of them are qualified for law or med or whatever they want and they do not want deflation relative to peer schools to hurt the students. They then showed below-average 3.3, 3.5 GPA students and the high percent of those "lower" GPAs that get into US-Med schools and Law schools.

I think your other premise is wrong:
Higher average grades assigned to similarly difficult tests does NOT equal less intellectual. When you have one of these kids in a stem field at one of these schools, they work very hard, push themselves intellectually, talk about a wide variety of topics including favorite non-school authors, outside of class research, and most are vigorous with studies even the ones who are getting almost all As. It is no cakewalk despite the easier grades: they are all built to try to be above average and that is not easy .[/quote]

have to disagree with this.  Caltech, Harvard, MIT and now Hopkins bas reinstituted test scores because they found not all students were up to par due to test optional.  There’s no way 75 percent of the class is scoring over 98th percentile on SATs when less than 65 percent even submit scores at ivies and other schools.  It is less intellectual because grading is easier and content is dumbed down for students that should t be there.[/quote]

DP. Actually if you pull up pre-test optional SAT ranges the JHU 25th%ile is 1480, very similar to most of the other T15 privates: that was the 98th %ile in 2019. So about 75% 98-99th %ile is spot on. Mine is at an ivy that ranks in the top 10 and has very similar grade distributions to the above post, including the description now vs the early 90s (when DH attended). Other alum parents discuss it on parent pages--C's are rare now, but our kids still pull late nights and long weekends trying to get around the mean on notoriously difficult exams in Calc, chem, CS, and the dreaded Econ, which apparently were the lowest means years ago. It seems quite reasonable JHU as a top 10 would be fairly similar SAT ranges (pre-TO) and they are. 
[/quote]

Agreed but the argument is you
cannot compare the current crop of test optional kids to pre-test optional. Pre test optional was by definition 100% test required. It’s a possibility they and other top privates admitted 25% of the current and previous few year student bodies with test scores under 1400 even. we just dont know as people did not submit low scores.[/quote]

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