Hello! I’m a grade 12 student who has applied to two programs at UofT: Life Sciences at St. George, and Physical and Mathematical Sciences at UofT Scarborough. I’ve heard a lot about grade deflation at the undergrad level at St. George, but not so much about the other campuses. Is it still present at Scarborough and Mississauga? Thank you!
hey there,
great question.
i go to the st. george campus, and in my experience, grade deflation is a pretty common occurrence here. however, i believe it happens across all campuses, since it seems to stem from U of T’s institutional grading policies and not from individual professors or TAs.
although i’ve never taken any courses at UTSC, i did take one course at UTM in which the grades were clearly deflated. and if i had to throw out a super rough estimate, i’d say maybe 20% of the courses i’ve ever taken were impacted by grade deflation.
that being said, personal anecdotes can only tell you so much, so i won’t say too much about the details of the grade deflation i’ve experienced in my courses. instead, if you wanted a more detailed analysis, i’d recommend checking out some articles written by the varsity (U of T’s student paper)! i’ll link them here:
these articles argue that the grade deflation at U of T is an institutional problem. essentially, there’s a whole handbook for instructors in the faculty of arts and sciences that outlines rules about how they give out grades. as the varsity suggests, this tells us that the source of the deflation does not lie with individual course instructors.
for example, the guidelines say that for first and second-year courses, only 15-35% of the students should get A’s. meanwhile, the proportion of F’s in a first or second-year course should not be more than 10%. if not, the course should undergo review and make sure grades were given out fairly.
interestingly, these guidelines are mainly meant to apply to first and second year courses, since U of T knows that grades matter the most for grad school when you’re in third and fourth year. so if this is something you’re worried about, it seems like grade deflation might not be as pronounced in upper year classes.
anyways, to directly answer your question, i spent some time looking into the UTSC academic handbook, UTM handbook, and the UTSG handbook, and i found that the guidelines on grade distribution are consistent across all three campuses. if these guidelines really do enable certain instructors to keep deflating student’s grades, then there should theoretically be not much difference across campuses in rates of grade deflation. the only noteworthy difference is that the UTM handbook explicitly mentions that these guidelines are not mandatory, and course marks are not required to fit into pre-defined grade distributions.
overall, the data on grade deflation is super murky and there’s not a clear answer. my take is that grade deflation is definitely present across all three campuses, but whether it happens at similar rates is anyone’s guess.
i also think that if you’re trying to choose between which campus to attend, there are plenty of other factors to weigh. i’d recommend you check out this article on what makes each campus unique, and also look into the different opportunities at each campus for your specific programs!
and finally, please don’t let this get you down or make you too scared about coming to U of T. if you’re coming to UTSG for life sciences, i can tell you that none of the first year life sci courses i took were affected by grade deflation. while i know it’s widespread across different departments, in my personal experience, mainly social science courses have been the issue. all hope is not lost and it’s still possible to do well!
best of luck and hope this helps!
over and out,
aska