Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids are also cheating like crazy. IYKYK

Yes. My kid is not cheating and grades reflect that. The profs know but feel there is nothing they can do. I feel like they should be able to catch some of these kids and send a strong signal but alas they don’t pursue the cases because it is too much work and there is parental pushback. It’s very sad.

UVa has online exams and recently some departments changed back to inperson due to rampant cheating. Exams are becoming more short and long answer instead of multiple choice. Professors are starting to allow everyone to bring in equations etc and making exams challenging so having equations does not help.
Top schools have already been doing this for years: it is almost impossible to cheat when the exam has one problem per page with 8 different solvable parts to each problem and exams are in person on paper. UVA used to be one of the most paper-preferred colleges and it changed for the worse in covid. It is changing back fast. This is direct information from a stem professor and relates to significant cheating in a classic premed course that happened fall 2024. My kid is at an ivy and was explaining the long paper tests that are not cheatable: uva apparently used to do more of that and moved to online exams in covid. It will improve soon

Steadily increasing, but accelerating.

1991 - 3.09
1995 - 3.14
2000 - 3.16
2010 - 3.29
2015 – 3.32
2020 – 3.50
2024 – 3.59

Anonymous wrote:My department is looking to hire a SWE, and we received about 50 resumes from the technical recruiter to look at. Twelve of those resumes come from recent UVA CS grads, and all of them have at least 3.85 GPAs. I guess nobody is allowed to have anything less than 3.5 GPA at UVA.

Well, I can assure that’s not true. Mine has a 3.1.

Anonymous wrote:In the early 90s I never met a UVA student with less than a 3.9.

It has always been known for grade inflation.

I’m a decade younger than you (so maybe things had changed - doubtful) but I was top 15% of my class at UVA with a 3.79. So…

My department is looking to hire a SWE, and we received about 50 resumes from the technical recruiter to look at. Twelve of those resumes come from recent UVA CS grads, and all of them have at least 3.85 GPAs. I guess nobody is allowed to have anything less than 3.5 GPA at UVA.

Anonymous wrote:Have acceptance rates at the school become more competitive? Thinking maybe students are stronger than ever too

Nah, mostly snowflakes. As far as acceptance rates, most schools are space constrained so cannot grow class sizes. More kids applying to same limited number of slots lowers acceptance rates. It’s a numerator denominator thing.

Anonymous wrote:Have acceptance rates at the school become more competitive? Thinking maybe students are stronger than ever too

But high school grade inflation is at record levels as well.

Anonymous wrote:So—yeah when everyone else is cheating and using AI to do everything…the honest kids take a hit….bit they will come out if it better off with critical thinking skills.

This. It took me a long while to figure out that many STEM students with very fancy calculators were programming the key equations into their calculator.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Kids are also cheating like crazy. IYKYK

Yes. My kid is not cheating and grades reflect that. The profs know but feel there is nothing they can do. I feel like they should be able to catch some of these kids and send a strong signal but alas they don’t pursue the cases because it is too much work and there is parental pushback. It’s very sad.

Yes!! My kid went to a very strict Catholic HS…even had to turn desks backwards so teacher could see screens during tests, writing assignments paper/pen in class. He wouldn’t even use chat or grammarly to edit for grammar only on essays. So—yeah when everyone else is cheating and using AI to do everything…the honest kids take a hit….bit they will come out if it better off with critical thinking skills.