You might also consider that NPHC members generally join later in their college career when classes are getting tougher. Freshman/Sophomore years are all basic studies and are pretty easy but as you get into upper level courses Junior and Senior year, grades can go down some. I don't know if this is documented, but I know it was true for me. It was much easier to get a 4.0 in Speech 101 (freshman year) than in Neuroanatomy, Anatomy, and Physiology(Junior year).

also another good point, you expressed better than i wanted to.

and not that this reason is an excuse for poor grades, but smaller NPHC chapters make for resources being spread thin. ie. a chapter of 5, for example, has to attempt to do the work of what, at minimum 50-60 girls of an average NPC chapter to stay afloat. and often of that chapter of 5, some of those girls are involved with 50-11 other things on campus.

its never just classes, chapter, and partytime. grades get sacrificed often. and as mentioned above, law of averages.

I wasn't referring so much to the grades students earn as the level of preparation they might have received. They may be linked, but in some cases even the most motivated students good-grade-making students in high school are held back by the level of classes offered at their schools. When they get to the next level (college), they find out that other high schools taught more and demanded more, and they find themselves behind.

(This can also happen in reverse. We can all think of people who say college was easier than high school, but I think it happens a lot less frequently than kids going off to college lacking some skills.)

There are some people who see fundamental differences in the educational opportunities offered to most white students k-12 and those offered to most minority students, particularly when you contrast majority white schools with majority black or Hispanic schools.

(It's may not be that the educational opportunities within schools are that different by race although you can find studies that suggest they are. It's that a gap can exist in what the schools offer their student to choose from.)

So, if it were true that a difference existed in greek groups' GPAs, it might be tied to the educational opportunities those students had before they arrived in college. And if there are general trends in educational opportunities that are tied to race and membership in certain groups is traditionally linked with race, it would not be entirely surprising to see a relationship of some kind.

Or it might just be that the kids at the OPs campus are slackers.

So NPCs would get the GPA "cushion" of 1/4 to 1/2 of their members taking easier classes? That's an interesting idea.

ETA: It sort of seems like this effect would partially be canceled out by pledging people before they proved themselves academically, and now, I think the majority of NPCs even initiate before the first college grades are in. Does anyone know if the general college GPA trend is up or down as a student moves through classes? Major level classes are harder, but I think the students who are in them are usually serious enough to compensate with more hard work.

As someone who was initiated via undergrad during my sophomore year, your findings are related to that of your university and it only speaks to the chapters at your school. My undergrad chapter was always among those with the highest gpa's at my school and I'm sure this is the case at many schools. I will say that it can indeed be challenging to fulfill sorority/fraternity duties and keep your grades high when your chapter is small and therefore there are less hands available to do what is required. Also sometimes chapters can take on more than they are truly able to and instead of creating calendars with less activity, they try to do everything.

As for required gpa's, all of the NPHC orgs have national gpa's that all chapters must adhere to. In my org, it is possible for a chapter to have a local gpa that is higher than the national but never lower than the national. The idea of a chapter not achieving the national gpa is not taken lightly and consequences are enforced, although this doesn't necessarily mean that a chapter would be prohibited from engaging in all activities. For the gpa's of each org, visit the national websites.

:rolleyes:

yeah, well the white fraternities common sense is always absurdly lower than the rest of the pack.

-tld221
--do you see the stupid isht they do? sheesh.

Oh, and yes NPCs look at GPAs for membership evaluation. And sometimes it turns out that a straight A high school kid can't do well with college level work, but I suspect that more often than not, good students continue to be good students and slackers continue to be slackers.

I also think that GPA is one of the areas in which NPC groups really like to compete to the level that it might affect individual behavior.

And if a group valued service or campus involvement more that being #1 in grades, then it would be hard to compete with the chapter that partially defined themselves by always being at the top of the GPA list.

Sometimes it does seems like a year can't go by on any campus where one of the white fraternities doesn't prove this right.

Reading through the risk management forum kind of shows it.

But, of course, it's not true for all of them.

while being known as "the greek org with the highest GPA" is awesome, if the motivation is "because we win" and not because, well you want to get good grades anyway....

i kinda cant buy that. getting good grades takes effort and doesnt happen overnight. at the same time, early on, one blemish can totally screw up a GPA. lets say youre a frosh and youve got a near perfect first semester--a B+ screwed up your otherwise straight-A semester. but then you bomb out that second time around (unlikely, but lets say this student gets like D's and F's), that GPA drops to what, something under a 3.0? not bad i suppose, but youve gotta have a couple awesome semesters to catch up. as in, youd need to get straight A's for the next few semesters to get back up to what you had that first semester.

or it can happen in reverse: you bomb out first semester and then you play catch up for the next few semester to prove you can cut it.

and to make this circular, this froshie, with her 2.something in a house of 3.something-plus house may not affect the overall house GPA, but in a smaller chapter, surely.

Que?

Oh, and that's "Que" as in the Spanish word translating to "what" and not the suggestion that members of Omega Psi Phi, or "Ques", is the embodiment of what you suggest. (I went to a good high school ;) )

You know, the more I think about this thread, I have questions for the OP. Such as... WHY?

But, I've been on GC since '01 and have come to realize that it is the GC way to swerve out of your lane. http://www.pledgepark.com/images/smilies/driving.gif

omg that emoticon FTW.

I think all NPC have ideals that value scholarship, so it's not contrary in any way for them to value getting good grades, but I do really think that for some chapters, GPA is really emphasized more than at others. And I think once you are number one, it's really hard to face falling to three or four, so the really competitive chapters may be less interested in a girl who is a "grade risk" during recruitment and then they start self selecting for high grades maybe more than other chapters.

(Although all chapters want girls with good grades, I think, and to be honest, the whole process kind of self selects for the same type of good-grade making, involved on campus type of person.)

And NPCs typically are bigger, so one or two girls aren't going to pull their average down that much, absolutely.

But you know, it seems like we're almost accepting that NPC grades would be higher when we really don't have conclusive evidence of that. That's what I mean about it generally being interesting. If it were true, these might be the reasons.

It might turn out that all NPHC groups have higher average GPAs nationally than the NPC and NIC groups. And it would be equally interesting to speculate about why that would be true. Would smaller chapters inspire a person to work harder in class because he or she is one of the few representatives of the group? Is it that the legacy of perseverance and triumph that some of the groups have inspires at a deep level? It it that only the academic creme de la creme join NPHCs, so the average high school experience by race doesn't matter? Is it that by joining later, you'd be more serious?

I'm all about continuing to talk about this but what "what" should I try to explain?

ETA: looking back, I think you may mean the guy and girl differences. At the high school level generally, and at the college level where I've see statistics reported, girls and women have higher average GPAs than boys and men do.
(I have no idea what this means for the transgendered.) There's getting to be a little push-back to schools being worried about gender equity for females by people who trot out these stats and suggest that maybe our current education methods are bad for boys. In my experience, girls are more interested in pleasing other people (probably because they are socially conditioned to), and I think grade differences are a reflection of this effort to please the teacher and their parents, and boys are probably learning about the same amount of stuff but don't care that much about the details that would lead to higher grades.