Reply to What’s wrong with William & Mary?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Our DD likes the vibe and nerdiness of W&M and it would be a good fit for her, but she want to do pre-health and needs a great GPA. W&M is probably too much of a grind to maintain a 3.5+ she'd need for med school. [/quote]

W&M actually has quite high average GPAs for a public school.  You can see data at gradeinflation.com .  W&M average was 3.33 in 2014.  In comparison, UVA was 3.32 in 2013, and VT was 3.15 in 2015.  Grades tend to go up over time so could be higher now.[/quote]

Yes, but it's really hard to get those high grades. Whereas in many schools regularly attending and doing all your work in most classes (non-STEM) might get you a low B, that is not the case at W&M. Students study a lot to get that 3.33 average (I think that's still the average). They really do give C's and D's to kids who complete all the work.  And when you figure at both W&M and UVA nearly all the students there have weighted HS GPAS above 4.0 and SATs in the top 10% of their class, some of the really strong students work their best and still won't make the grade.  There are fewer people who are slacking off to fill up the low end of the curve at W&M.  So you can't just go by average GPA and assume it's inflation.  Pre-med students are wise not to just investigate average GPA but what are the culture/practice/study habits of those who get below the average GPA at a school.[/quote]

Adding to this though: I'm glad DC chose W&M in part because it is hard academically. (I have two others who went to similarly "good" schools and they all agree that W&M is tougher).  I think we can lose sight that education is not mainly just getting a credential to access the next thing, but there is intrinsic value to what is learned and the work habits developed.  I think having significant challenging work with realistic feedback for 4 formative years has important long-term benefits.  Some majors do this just by the content in a wide range of schools (e.g., engineering is going to be more uniformly challenging across schools than say business or history, because the demands of engineering education are more precise and specified), but for majors that are more variable across institutions I think it's valuable to go to the toughest one your child will thrive at.[/quote]

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