Obama's grades at Columbia

[George_Bonanza]

I'm guessing that Obama's grades at Columbia were around 3.0-3.3, since he did not graduate with honors (I think back then, at Columbia University, you had to be over 3.3 in order to graduate with honors). Since Obama was nevertheless admitted to Harvard Law School, I seriously doubt he had a 2.X GPA. I'm going to estimate that he was a few points shy of 3.3.

Anyway, my point is not to do a knee-jerk Freeper move and accuse Obama of unfairly gaining his place at Harvard Law. My point is if a guy like Obama can just be an average student in college, yet still excel not only at Harvard Law but in later (and more important) endeavors, then is there any meaningful value of college GPAs? I say this as a junior undergraduate who has just finished finals, and grade inflation has recently become a hot topic at my school. I find myself bemoaning the two B's I got in freshman year that could've so easily been A's because it would've pushed my GPA up a full tenth of a point. I feel like a below-average schmuck just because a number that supposedly measures how good of a learner I am is not as good as I want it to be.

Is GPA meaningless? Is undergraduate education meaningless?

[XemaSab]

1. Undergraduate education is CRITICAL to a broad understanding of the world

GPA.... is mostly meaningless.

For example, my soils professor graded ON THE CURVE. In a class of 14 students, there would be 1 F, 2 D's, 2 B's, an A... and a LOT of C's.

I worked harder for some of those C's than I worked for A's in lesser classes. :shrug:

[Radical Activist]

2. GPA is important for getting into grad school.

Especially if you want an assistanceship. Otherwise it's completely meaningless in most fields. I've never had a potential employer ask me what my GPA was. No one cares.

[Genevieve]

3. It's not just your GPA that will gets you into Harvard.

A tremendous factor determining which Graduate School you will be accepted to has to do with with which college you graduated from.
Obama graduated from Columia University, one of the very few Ivy League schools in the country.

[Genevieve]

4. Also, his LSAT's had to be very high.

[AtomicKitten]

5. His professors have said publicly he is brilliant.

Off the charts, in fact. Probably had something to do with it. ;)

[patrice]

6. Grades won't mean crap in this country until we have a Public discussion of STANDARDS.

I taught highschool seniors for four years. I also taught junior college students. My Master's was on the subject of comparing curriculum to standards to identify any relationships. One of the things I found was grade inflation over appx the last 25 years.

[TeamJordan23]

7. Remember, he went to Occidental for 2 years before tranferring to Columbia

I'm sure he had nearly straight A's to transfer to Columbia. So those two years will inflate his overall GPA up for admission into Harvard Law School. He also did pretty well on the LSAT and he had a great experience as a community organizer before going to law school.

[Genevieve]

11. Right --

I forgot to mention his experience as a Community Organizer,

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

8. I graduated with high honors from a large Midwestern University

Only reason I got in was because of my GPA in high school, which put me in the top 105 of my class, so I know GPA is important for getting into college. I was later able to acquire an advanced degree with highest honors. However, I don't see any of these feats really helping me with my life and career choices.

[Presidentcokedupfratboy]

9. My GPA wasn't great

Only a 2.7 - But I did get into Grad School for Library Science at Columbia. My grades improved every year, though.

[SheilaT]

10. I've attended five different colleges,

and from two of them I have a 4.0. I've never applied to grad school, and no one has ever cared what my GPA was.

Grade inflation really is a problem at many of the best schools in this country. I'm very proud of my 21 year old son, currently a senior at the University of Tulsa, who has taken at least two, maybe three classes from an instructor who basically does not give out A's. He's learned a lot from her, and I'm so glad he hasn't just wanted to protect his GPA, which is an easy thing to do.

I do expect that the graduate schools out there know which colleges have rampant grade inflation and which don't, just as the colleges understand from your high school transcripts if you took tough classes, such as honors and AP classes. This is also where the standardized tests matter, because it tends to level the playing field by showing how you did compared to a very large pool of others who took the test, such as the GRE or the MCAT or whatever they all are for getting into grad schools.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. I guess I had better not ever run for office

My undergrad GPA was a 2.3

Hey, it was the 70s. I partied. :rofl:

[Brooklyns_Finest]

13. Federal Government

If you want to get in to the federal government at a GS7 instead of a GS5 you have to have over a 3.0 GPA. THat is about a $10k difference in pay. The gov also has outstanding scholars programs, where people with high undergrad GPA's can get in to agencies such as CIA, DIA, Energy, etc without going through the competative process.

[BlooInBloo]

14. Undergrad degrees are meaningless as free-standing items....

Too much of what we tell undergrads is simply false.

On top of that, the vast majority of undergrads are in idiot-majors anyway.

The lsat and mcat are good measures of intellectual horsepower. The gre used to be, until they grossly dumbed it down. The others are tests I would expect a middle school student to well on.


EDIT: Classics majors excepted. That's the only major I know of that pretty much guarantees you're not an idiot, even at the undergrad level.

[democrattotheend]

15. FYI, he didn't even check the box on his Harvard Law application

I know that's not the point of your post but I just thought I'd point it out, lest anyone use this to call him a product of affirmative action.

[yardwork]

16. Columbia is an incredibly difficult school. It's hard enough to get in.

Then Obama went to Harvard Law and was editor of the Review. This is the top of the pinnacle in law.

Obama's academic credentials are brilliant. Very, very few people have achieved at his level in academics and politics. He's probably one of the smartest people ever elected to the U.S. presidency, if not the smartest.

[George_Bonanza]

17. Not at the undergraduate level though

No doubt that he achieved much at Harvard, but in Columbia, he wasn't a great or notable student.

[yardwork]

18. Just getting into Columbia and graduating from there is a high achievement.

It's known as the school for nerds even among Ivy Leaguers.

[BlooInBloo]

19. I didn't get above a 3.0 cumulative until the last qtr of my senior year....

And I was chosen as my school's "outstanding graduate" for that year (or some silly name like that). I then proceeded to get a phd from one of the best 2 or 3 grad programs in the world.

The problem is the measuring stick you're using. It's the one that idiots typically use.

[Genevieve]

22. What was your major?

[BlooInBloo]

29. Philosophy.

[Sanity Claws]

25. What years were you there?

Columbia College in the late 1960s was radicalized and academics were not important.
Later, Columbia College remained all male when the other ivies became co-ed. This hurt recruitment terribly in 1970s. I'm not sure when but I believe Columbia College did not go co-ed until sometime in the 1980s.

Contrary to your representations, Columbia College does provide a rigorous academic environment.

[Genevieve]

28. It really does. (rigorous)

Columbia made my years at NYU feel like grade school.
(And NYU is a very competitive schooll)

[BlooInBloo]

30. Um, what the hell are you talking about?

[gristy]

20. GPA may be important for your first couple jobs, but after that not so much

Grades are most certainly not meaningless, nor is your undergraduate education. I think it is good of you to pay attention to your grades - it helps keep your nose to the grindstone!

[Sanity Claws]

21. Could I see support for your statements?

I thought you needed at least 3.5 to graduate with honors of any kind. I don't know about COlumbia at that time.
Further, Columbia may have had some kind of rule regarding the number of credits you earned at COlumbia to be eligible for honors, regardless of gpa.
I sincerely doubt that he was admitted to Harvard Law with less than 3.5 gpa at Columbia.

[Sanity Claws]

23. I looked at Columbia's current policy

College (Latin) Honors
The Bachelor of Arts degree is awarded with honors in three categories (cum laude, magna cum laude, summa cum laude) to no more than 25 percent of the graduating class, with no more than 5 percent summa cum laude, and the total of summa and magna cum laude not exceeding 15 percent. College honors is the highest academic recognition awarded by the College. The Committee on Honors, Awards, and Prizes reviews the academic records of the top 35% of the graduating class. Selection is based not on GPA alone, but on the breadth, depth and high quality of academic achievement, departmental recommendations, and outstanding academic work beyond that which is required for the degree. Students may not apply for honors nor may they solicit faculty for recommendations in this process.

There is no separate consideration of honors for October or February graduates. Each spring the Committee on Honors, Awards, and Prizes considers the October and February graduates along with those who are degree candidates for May. The report of those graduating with honors is in the May Class Day program. The honor is noted on the diploma and transcript. October and February graduates may ask the Registrar to add an honors notation to an already issued diploma.

http://www.college.columbia.edu/bulletin/programs_of_study

This indicates that honors is not based on GPA alone. If Obama didn't graduate with honors, it was because he earned half his academic credits at a less rigorous college and Columbia preferred to give the honor to someone else.

[Hippo_Tron]

26. Colleges change their policies on that frequently...

So I would not be surprised if there was a different metric in the 80's when Obama graduated.

[Sanity Claws]

27. My point is that the OP has nothing to support his suppositions

He pulled this stuff out of his ass and that really bothers me. I at least consulted the current policy to show why I think he is full of it.

[Hippo_Tron]

24. Columbia is a notoriously difficult undergraduate school and does not inflate grades

But yea I'm in the same boat as you are in terms of grades. I'll probably wind up with a 3.7 by the time I graduate and I'm worried that won't be good enough to get me into a good PhD program. I know there are a lot of other factors considered but I feel like I can't compete, especially since grade inflation is prominent at other schools and I happen to go to one that (like Columbia) does not have grade inflation. Also I'm really peeved about the fact that we have +'s and -'s instead of just A, B, C, D, F like some schools do. If it was just a 90+ is an A and an 80+ was a B I could have maximized my efforts such that my GPA would be no less than 3.8 (4 A's and a B) in any given semester and 4.0 in a lot of semesters. Instead I have to worry about getting a 93 or higher instead of a 92 in my classes if I want an A and getting a 93 or higher requires near perfection in some cases (depending on whether or not the class is curved).

Plus, I think that college and graduate admissions were simply less competitive when Obama was applying than they are today.

[Phredicles]

31. It's harder to get a high GPA as an undergraduate than in a grad program,

in my experience. I barely cleared 3.0 getting my BA at Reed (after which grad school was almost easy): 3.03, if I remember right. But I got one B and I think three A-minuses in (this is the part I'm not proud of) 13 years of graduate school - all my other letter grades were As.

So it's not surprising to me that Obama would have gotten better grades even in a program as rigorous as Harvard Law, especially if he did his undergradute work at Columbia, which is certainly not a bad school if you have to go to college on the east coast.;)