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Depending on how young your daughter is, especially if she is still a child or preteen, I strongly recommend searching "female asbergers books" on Amazon and reviewing ratings for yourselves but there are alot of books for parents about aspie girls, what to expect, how to empower them, and most importantly, how to keep them safe.

Female aspies are empaths actually, which is counter intuitive to people not familiar with all of this, which makes them huge targets not just for casual bullying and being outcasted by girly girls, but for more sinister reasons as well. Even being older, empaths are the perfect codependent counter type for narcissists and other wise sociopaths and psychopaths. They have affective empathy (empty shallow charming ability to pretend to have emptathy) but crave raw empathy which is what aspie girls have an abundance of (google intense world theory, applies to both male and females for autism). This coupled with (I edited in my original comment in more detail) a females aspies or any autistic females tendency to be just incredibly naive about peoples emotions and their intentions, is a disaster waiting to happen.

Going to school in a male dominated environment with an unusual number of anti social personalities (introverts --> engineering...) I was the perfect target so sociopathic men and there were alot of them around me. It's not surprising in RETROSPECT that a year ago I got out of a long term relationship with a verifiable sociopath for all the reasons I just said.

After educating myself about all of this I wish I had read some of these aspie books for young females when I was younger and I could have protected myself from a lot of toxic situations.

Now, I volunteer in aspie programs teaching young girls how to code. Alot of aspie women can't keep good jobs because they are "rude and bossy" or not charming enough or "creepy and quiet". Luckily for me my skill set is in high need and objectively evaluated for the most part (can't argue with me if I produce your code on time) so I thought it would be incredibly empowering to build girls with this confidence and self esteem, and potentially the ability to arm themselves with solid careers/technical skillsets that overpower an HR departments ability for a 26 yr old girl wearing designer clothes and paid to be charming to evaluate a nerdy antisocial girl on her "overall performance" if actually she is an objectively solid and valued individual contributer and has code to show it.

If she is young I would recommend fostering her hobbies as much as possible and encouraging "structured playtime" for whatever her interests are. With channeling and encouragement (for all the people who post successful autistic women as a reason to doubt they have it at all) aspies including aspie girls can become MASTERS at the things they are obsessed with.

Turns out, successful people are typically successfully because they love what they do, they have infectious passion and they are GOOD at it, and can spend hours uninterupted developing their product or building their empire, so actually aspie women are the perfect character trait combination then for successful people, if they can have emotional support through their difficulties with social interactions while being encouraged to do what other people call "active but odd obsessions" because that could be the talent that makes or inspires her career one day, or maybe even her company that she starts.

More in response to the comments so far than the article itself. In general, I think these comments too much reflect or defend against the idea that "autistic women have it worse than autistic men" and people are debating this when really the message is "The scientific community does not have an official lsit of symptoms for autistic women versus autistic men" This is important because noone knows what causes autism so diagnosis based on symptoms is the only way, and we are figuring out right now just how different these symptoms are, and how uneducated the medical community is at even thinking to get a girl diagnosed for autism.

40 years ago the medical community, even the guy who coined autism himself, didn't even beleive it was possible for women to have autism at all (even the most extreme obvious cases) we are in close to that same position for high functioning women with Asbergers. Just take the fact that the average age of diagnosis for women is about ten years later in life than males, mostly because the symptoms accumulated over the past 40 years were only accumulated based on men. So women, just to get diagnosed (forget crying a life of "oh we have it so much harder as being autistic) just to get a diagnosis you have to stumble into a series of misdiagnosis and oddities and lack of documentation about how these symptoms (again we don't know the source) present themselves in women. BY then, women are just as much as men, if not more by a delayed diagnosis frustrated by everything theve been through and all the things that are "wrong" with them that their families can't figure out.

The struggles autistic men and women face are not to be argued whether its worse for one gender or the other, but based on the whole point above, that they are DIFFERENT, and we are less educated about one set of symptoms than the other. It's not about giving one gender a "I've got it harder than you" sympathy card.

1. In 2013 Asbergers was classified as being on the Autism scale.

2. Alot of high functioning Asbergers are technically autistic now that were medically/officially not autistic 5 years ago, but these people are no different than they were 5 years ago, its that the medical community rearranged a big group of typically high functioning people and put them on the autism scale. I happen to be one of these, and was diagnosed (as Maya was in this article) with OCD at 8, and anxiety, and basically an accumulation of common symptoms of autism until I went to an Engineering school where so many people were on the scale a Professor made us all take the test and that is when I found out about all of this.

3. Speaking of that, You can be tested for this and registered on a scale. As we do not know what causes autism, we can only diagnosis based on symptoms, like a lot of things, so the conjecture about "not knowing for sure" on this thread is valid, but so is it for alot of other diseases and cancers that we don't know the cause of, so that does not invalidate the seriousness of the impact the non sourced symptoms have on the lives of people.

4. Being an Aspie and a book nerd (my mom first took me to get me tested to see what was "wrong" with me when I spent the entire summer of my 8th year and read all 138 Mandy (kids mystery novel) books in 7 weeks and didn't care to do anything else).

I have since being diagnosed, read 17 books on females with Asbgergers and about 15-20 books about Autism in general, and I think the comments about females with Autism on this Atlantic comment thread and the HN thread so far are way off. That being said...

5. I DO NOT like this article because it is almost entirely anecdotal and focuses on Maya's extreme cases while for me, and alot of other female aspies I know (sources of female aspies below) it went more like all the things that make you cute and "quiet" growing up, you do not grow out of.

I would pausit (and youll see some horribly negative and ignorant comments on the actual commentary of the article's page on the Atlantic) that alot of the anger coming from the responses is trying to put girls on this special "i have it worse than you" stage but its not about that. It's that we have it hard in DIFFERENT Ways.

Girls are EXPECTED to be socially smooth, incredibly bubbly and cute and outgoing. Girls to have careers that are more socially oriented. We are expected to be flirtacious. We are expected to be stylish. Any deviation from this norm results in a horror movie of emotional bullying especially from NT girls starting in middle school, who feel threatened by you and think you are some kind of monster, and the bullying does continue, just in more nuanced pretensed ways as women "mature" and learn how to be "fake" nice, whereas typically we are considered to be continually naive and childish, and too innocent because we are bad at interpreting other peoples emotions, and more importantly, their motivations, which actually makes female aspies more vulnerable to being taken advantage of in any situation, but particularly sexual ones, and this aspect is only exxagerated by the fact that overall physically and emotionally aspie women tend to mature more slowly, and most don't start their periods until 19-20ish.

I would say from there it's not that our genetic inheritance or whatever the cause is, that our physical lot of autism is "worse" its that our personalities, career choices and lack of friends when women are expected to have friends where its generally accepted that alot of guys are introverts, is that we are just put in situations where we stand out like a sore thumb more and more, whether it be being the only girl of 5 in my Engineering Department and automatically standing out, in the male dominated career or the fact that when a guy tries to hit on me at a bar I may look normal but the nuances of these more subtle interactions I fail miserably at.

I've lost a couple guys interested in me because I literally could not flirt and do this properly.

It means for me I have NO idea how to flirt, how to make any eye contact or in an effort to make any eeye contact giving an acidental death glare.

To say it's degrading for your self esteem is an understatement...

Being socially awkward,

5.5 So as far as the people on here making comments and posting articles about how the more they see high functioning women/successful CEOs being autistic the less they believe it, BELIEVE IT! Because on the high functioning scale, we are masterminds and extremely laser focused and dedicated, but also sympathize with them how hard it is emotionally as well because it goes against the grain of everything people expect from women. Not to mention, women whove managed to surpass all these social abnormalities and become successful have learned more than ANYONE just how much success is based on political favour and shmoozing people, not because they are good at it or even succumbbed to it, because they KNOW how hard it has been not having those characteristics come naturally have had to put in the effort in one way or another to overcome inadequacies other people cannot even comprehend, and have probably faced alot of judgment as they have stumbled their way along. Certainly for me this is the case.

6. reddit.com/r/aspergirls is a more realistic perspective of what high functioning "autism" specifically Asbergers is likem since it is a community of women who have asbergers or are atlast trying to learn more about it by sharing about their symptoms etc.

As someone who got rid of facebook in 2013 and has not gone back:

I may not have scientific evidence but I think alot of us could say it feels like an addiction, and even is something we don't want to do but do anyways, it makes us less happy but we still do it, it distracts us from work but we still do it, it robs of of intimacy but we still do it. I don't know about scientific research but that sounds like an addiction to me. THAT, is why social media is dangerous.

Do you have goals in life? Is social media effecting your goals and the people around you? Then limit it or get it out of your life.

I also think it plays into depression for a lot of people because:

1. People cherry pick what they want to share so you are not getting an accurate representation, and thus youre comparing all of your life, the cherry picked and non cherry picked to theirs, which will inevitably lead to dissapointment. They will show their photos of their trip to France but not that they fight almost every night or have not done their dishes in a week. They will post pictures of sushi but not how eating out all the time is racking up their credit card debt. Maybe you should stay at home and save money and maybe they are destroying their financial lives, but yet you still feel inadequate for not having as exciting of a life? That doesn't sound healthy..

2. It's a stalking website for insecure people and people who do not have the courage to engage or care enough to maintain a real relationships but want to keep tabs on you. Why would someone who never interacts with you in real life want to keep tabs on you? Try to that answer that quesion. Does it lead to anything good?

Now ask yourself why do YOU need it? Do to those same things to other people? To feel better about yourself? Why do you have so many selfies? Who are you trying to impress? What are you trying to prove to other people? What are you trying to prove to yourself?

I'll admit when fb first came out it was fun, before relatives and employers and ads came onto it. It was a way to get invited to college parties and wake up the next morning and laugh with your roomies as you scroll through pics and remember what happened the night before. It was NOT about relationship pain, being forced to announce to the whole world when something happens to you or you break up, hating other people and ways to engage in infidelity, or bragging about how many tens of thousands of dollars you spent on your wedding photographer, but lets be honest with ourselves, now it is.

SOME ANECDOTAL STUFF:

For some people its reddit. my ex boyfriend was so addicted to reddit we could be in the middle of a crisis, or on one such occasion I was discussing the pros and cons of a long distance job that would require one of us moving or living apart and thus him doubling his rent expenses, things I would assume he would be inherently interested in and he was browsing reddit on his phone the whole time. its like, nothing was more important than reddit. Sometimes its just about maturity and respect. He would stay up late at night and complain about not getting sleep because he couldn't stop browsing reddit.

It even affected our intimate life. I'm not a controlling girlfriend, and I respect if other people have different opinions or boundaries for what is ok with their boyfriends to do or not do, but I didn't really care he looked at porn. But over time amateur stuff on reddit became an obsession and anytime I did not feel comfortable doing something he would try to say well other girls do it on here. Well I'm not them.

How am I supposed to beat the collective satisfaction of the entire internet or even compete with it? There will always be a prettier, more successful girl with better photoshopped selfies and a shorter skirt on facebook you are friends with, than me. There will always be a girl on the internet willing to do something in bed I'm not willing to do. So accept me for who I am or get over it and move on. (The long end to that story is I did have to dump him because this kind of stuff ended up destroying our relationship and now he is incredibly depressed and I get emails from him about how its "eating him away inside" regarding the state of our relationship when it ended. Yup, thats right social media distorted his ability to properly value what was standing right in front of him and as a result he lost what really mattered to him, wow, sounds like an addiction to me.)

But the truth is with that attitude nothing will ever satisfy you, so the more you do it, the more of a drug it is the more you need it the more it's never enough, the more the person your dating seems somehow subpar to the collective standards of all the other people you browse or look at or are "friends" with on facebook while forgetting that as individuals all of those people have flaws and limitations and after a year of living with them will probably dissapoint you in some ways as well, and the less the people around you in your real life will be able to satisfy you.

I got rid of facebook in 2013 after I broke up with my ex, because everyone in our friends group didn't want to talk to either of us about how we were doing or help, they just wanted to see when we would change our relationships status so they could talk about us behind our back. The second I did guys that had not spoken to me in months or years were suddenly texting me like hey whats up. Really?

That's when I realized the people who actually care about you don't need your facebook profile. People who need your facebook profile are people who want to talk poorly of you and compare you to other people and judge you and keep track of when you can be of use to them, relationship wise or otherwise. What a pointless network it's devolved into.

Since I got rid of facebook the week we broke up, my life has gotten so much better. I'm focused on MY life, not anyone elses, and when I accomplish something its for ME. I don't have anywhere to post it or brag about it so you have to ask yourself what really motivates you in life? If impressing other people has anything to do with it then social media is probably going to aid in that toxic thought process you have an influence your behavior in a way that may ultimately be harmful to you.

My real friends which is maybe 5 or 6, some who live across the country still remember to call me on my birthday even though fb does not remind them. People I was not that close to or I didn't think I would ever be friends with stepped up and really reached out to me and helped me get through a hard time, people i least expected and they are not toxic or gossipy and they are not checking my facebook to laugh about me behind my back.

If a guy or really anyone at all ever wants to get to know me, he has to actually walk up to me and start a conversation, or is going to meet me through mutual friends, REAL friends, not friends scheming to hook people up on facebook, and before the conversation he doesnt kno w 1. how old i am where i went to school who i am dating who im friends with what i looked like on my summer vacation last year...

so all of my relationships friendships or otherwise feel much more organic and it weeds out people who can use information about you to manipulate you or mirror your interests fakely to get close to you.

As someone who went to a top ranked school in Engineering , I have an interesting anecdote that reveals perhaps a disturbing trend my friends and I have noticed in these engineering schools as we talk to more and more peers about it, which I think is important because this issue impacts more areas than just how these kids do in college, it effects every area of their life.

Me and some of my other female Engineering friends, just got out of long term relationships with boys we went to college with in Engineering, and while anecdotally its a coincidence that in this case I'm speaking from the perspective of three females (because the genders could be reversed with potentially the same problems), after much discussion we've realized the biggest issue with our exes is that their mothers practically ran their lives, even at the age of ...25.

Two of us came from a poor background with uneducated parents, so getting into a good college was completely of my own motivation and that characteristic of mine continued to play out and earn myself a role of success in life, and hers as well. The other had a mother that came from a very poor background with uneducated parents but paid her way through college and become a high end Executive on Wallstreet, and pushed her daughter to have the same ambition she did.

All three of our ex boyfriends however came from multigenerational inherited affluent wealth with stories about their grandparents creating legacies at fancy boarding schools and their parents played a role in everything they did. While this did print them a resume to get into a good college (and they were also smart and did actually perform well in school but that's ALL they had to do, was show up to classes chosen for them and do well). Once they got there, academically they were unmotivated and did poorly in classes while playing video games. When they graduated all three of them had "no idea" what they wanted to do post college. They all got ok jobs making entry level salaries but have sat in those positions for going on 5 years, miserable.

Meanwhile the three of us females were, in college: doing graduate research, taking grad classes, working part time jobs and had both started, taught ourselves investing etc etc. and now going on 5 years post college we are all age 26: one is the director of Marketing for a top ranked Bank, One of the cofounder of a trending tech startup, and I work in Engineering for a nonprofit in energy resources setting precedents in the Supreme court and free market economics for challenging resource monopolies and making energy resources more competitive, and all have surpassed our ex boyfriends salaries years ago....

All three of us one night discovered that not only had we all done our boyfriends resumes in college and updated them since college, all three of them asked us to do it for them, because their parents were sick of doing them as they had created them for their college admissions as well. Hmm...interesting...

Our exes were sitting at home in dead end jobs they admittedly hated, but couldn't stop playing Halo to update their resume unless their mothers called them and told them to do so, or their dads offered to look around for an opening in their respective companies. It boggles our mind but more importantly..

this same lackadaisical "wait for somebody else to swoop in and solve this problem for me" attitude became a problem in our interpersonal relationships. All of them had a hard time expressing their emotions or even being in touch with them, or knowing what they wanted or even verbalizing their own perceptions of problems because all of those things? someone had been doing that for them their whole lives.

This left all of usfrustrated with emotionally disconnected exes sitting at home not even knowing how to work on their own problems, much less adequately address issues in a relationship that involves two independent humans. All three of them kept running back to their estate to take time "off" and pout whenever a problem occurred at work or personally and hide from their problems while their mothers doted on them.

It also caused us to decrease our sympathy for them over time because they had everything handed to them yet still had excuses about why they hated their jobs and life so much. But we came from a world where excuses were not a luxury we had if we wanted not even a successful life but an even slightly comfortable one.

Meanwhile, we are traveling the world, doing well in our careers and also trying to figure out how to verbalize their perspective and then ask them if what we said was what they were feeling. Like, we had to present multiple choice options for them because they had no voice of their own.

Needless to say, these relationships did not work out. Everyone has issues and we were willing to admit to our own and take constructive feedback, but there was no constructive feedback, because they had never had to do that in their lives.

The most heartbreaking part was, in their careers and in their personal lives, they wanted a good career and they didn't want us to leave them, but they had burned their bridges and were left clueless on how to go about to their next phase of life. It was sad but we did not have time to raise children as 25 yr old females busting our tails in the tech environment. There's a reason we don't have kids right now, because we don't have time.

We each loved them dearly but we needed emotional equality and people who supported our ambitions and also had their own.

I'm not sure if these issues were also paired to be more likely outcomes with their personality types, or what the true root cause is, as I'm an Engineer, not a psychologist, but being able to talk to someone else going through the same thing, we saw some eerily similiar trends, and it always related back to their parents effectively babying them in areas of their life, that were embarassing from the perspective of highly independent and motivated people we had to be to effectively reach the same socioeconomic status they were born into.

Moral of the story: While having an Engineer Degree is important for Engineering (but not so much coding if at all)

the MORE important factors in success are 1. Knowing what you want and going after it

2. Being self motivated

3. Being able to clearly communicate your position whether its emotions, needs, or negociating a raise or why you feel you are up for the challenge of a new job position, etc

4. independent ability to not only a. identify b. define, but c. solve problems on your own

Sorry helicoptor parents but your missing the point. As someone else said earlier (whom I completely disagree with) he said "helicoptor parenting is working, get them into stanford and then they have the rest of their lives to fail"

woops, college is not the ends to a means, its a means to an end and if the means is handed to them, then they will not be able to fish in the real world by themselves. Teach them how to fish.

On the note of all the comments bashing the usefulness of Google Now in the first place, I think it would be helpful is Google had some visuals on use, growth of use and genre of cards, and some survey feedback about it.

I like

1. stepping out of work after a 13 hour day and pulling up my phone and google telling me which way I need to drive home because there is a 20min delay due to an accident. It's not something I think about everyday to check, just like checking the weather at 6am in the morning. Sure if my life was perfect I would but it's not. Google does these simple tasks for me and turns bad days into better ones but not adding on another 45min on the way home when I have already had a long day.

2. airports/new city? I wake up in the morning google already knows if my flight has been rerouted, the potential for delay due to weather, and whatever airport or new city I'm in, it tells me where there is to eat and what to do. Sure there are plenty of additional apps I could download if I was in the "in crowd" in san fran and knew the best ones for each city, but I'm not, and usually I'm busy so I want to have 15 highly ranked restaurants give me the best selection.

If I'm there on vacation sure I'll put more effort into finding off the beaten path places but honestly google now is helpful for people distracted with their everyday life.

3. At one point I was with visiting my boyfriend while he was on a business trip in Flagstaff. Google obviously knows we are dating. My phone was dead but the reminder for my flight came up on his phone. Sure there is a separate "app" just for that, per airline and then I could share my flight with my bf but WHY? Google already knew where he was, knew I was most likely flying there to visit him and gave him updates on my schedule 24hrs before hand all the way until I got home safely, as well as myself. Easy, one less thing to worry about in 2 peoples busy working lives. Once I send him my flight info, google picked right up on it. No "extra" apps needed. Didn't have to think to remember to do this.

4. I use google keep notes like an OCD freak as well so its nice to have what I've decided it important to me as well as things that I'd like to check if I remembered but google already has it staring back at me on my screen when I wake up in the morning or walk into a crowded airport or think I'm having an normal ride home.

I also (and for most young kids in big cities) have a busy social life and go to lots of music shows, but I go to alot so I don't remember the time date and price of every one so it's just nice to have if I don't do the same thing everyday.

It makes driving home, navigating airports, remembering to wish your college roommate happy birthday on the way to your rerouted terminal and also knowing you have an extra 10minutes to go to jamba juice that you didn't know was around the corner so you don't have to live off airplane food.

These are things that make my day alot nicer, alot more functional. I don't know what all the fuss about google now is...

That being said, the implications on privacy and how this data is stored and shared is an entirely different story from how convenient it is, but I am commenting on its usefulness, which other people don't seem to agree with.

While in general the people on HN are more likely to be in or working in a field related to the tech field (so it's hard for me to generalize outside of this industry demographic from a culturally anecdotal standpoint) I feel that in the tech field, the hot spots are Bay Area and Austin TX, though there are tech jobs everywhere, people are willing to decrease their cash flow as there is a cultural elitism with living in Bay Area or Austin in the world of tech. Portland and Seattle trailing behind as well.

On this note, it seems that even spanning beyond industry demographics, this article overlooked the possibility of culture and beliefs. For examples, if you are raised in the religious south, it's very likely even if you move across multiple state lines, you will be more likely to move to a place where religion is more prevalent culturally than elsewhere. Maybe this is not true however. Maybe young people raised in the bible belt are flooding out more than ever, but what are the most dominant correlation factors?

In the same way tech is a dominant culture for tech people, religion would seem to be a dominating factor, as well as people raised in extreme weather conditions. Ex: If you gew up on the Slopes in Colorado, perhaps you are much more likely to, even if moving someplace else for a few years, want to return home to the warm, the cold, the mountains, or whatever environment you were raised in, especially if you lived in an overwhelmingly dominant type of landscape.

Climate Religious/Political Preferences

Also, gender was overlooked, as well as ethnicity.

Ive noticed some ethnicities, even those of overall high socioeconomic status will stick together in demographic regions or, when populating a new region, do so in large groups. For example, I believe Jacksonville Florida has a concentrated percent of people of Indian ethnicity. As becoming a doctor or an Engineer is a common profession for this ethnicity in America, the fact that UF is near there, and the climate is similar to Indian climate, would seem like a big player.

Similarly for gender, as much as I don't like to stereotype. I wonder how many women vs men choose to move to a place because their spouse or SO lives in that place. How does that trend correlate with region and ethnicity, income level, religion etc.

Overall, poorly done research, that doesn't explore enough data to reveal any compelling outliers.

Would love to have seen breakdowns, polls or correlations of any type with

Industry type Region Landscape Ethnicity Gender Income level Education level

agreed

yes some more data based analytics on metrics you could calibrate on such as months alive, rounds of funding, profit margins, basically any type of portfolio you would present to an investor for value assessment.

I agree with feedjoelpie. One criticism I have here is that there is a lack of comprehensive data analytics from their actual portfolios before they cut the chord, and that it relies on self reported data from the founders, which is bound to be bias to some degree. Some of these failed that are exact clones of companies that were the exact same idea but implemented more quickly and ended up and still are very successful, and in those particular ideas, the autopsy of the failed companies never seems to want to admit their idea was just not that original, or not implemented as well.

Examples that stand out to me just from knowing really successful competitors of the same idea:

Bombfell Manilla Dnnr bloom.fm solorix

Overall, I value their feedback (and I am glad to see it compiled as opposed to every failed company posting on here as if they have some diamond in the ruff wisdom on why they failed) but I would prefer some more data based trends.

Overall interesting idea to start pulling more calibrated analytics from. I was also thinking someone should do the same thing for lessons learned from how VCs and Angel Investors screw over companies.

It's actually going to take some time for me to find something on this list that doesn't reek of knocking off popularized trending app ideas.

I happened to see 99 Dresses on this list, whom I saw on Shark Tank somehow (the one time I watched the show). I'm a girl and for me personally I don't really give about the idea of weddings and think its nonsense, and think it's a waste of money, but I thought it was a pretty cool idea that basically you could rent a wedding dress, and that sounded unique to me and a good niche of rent the runway, though I doubt I'll ever invest in a wedding dress myself in any capacity. Point is weddings are a billion dollar a yr industry and wedding dresses are sometimes the most expensive part aside from venue and catering. As culture becomes less traditional, it's less likely women will view their dresses as a long term investment their posterity will wear.

Additionally, I think I know of plenty of girls who would rather rent a designer wedding dress they could never afford outright (especially if their posterity is not going to wear it as culture is these days) than settle for something they like alot less because that is all they could afford to buy, that will sit in a closet. Additionally, now that we have facebook and social media, girls do not need to buy the dress (despite posterity) so it can collect dust in their closet for the sake of nostalgia. Now we have social media to document not only the dress but how the woman looked in the dress. Therefore, providing the capability to rent one of the most expensive clothing items the average woman will ever invest in, seemed like a pretty solid idea, and at least there was something a little unique about it. However, I have no idea how well she implemented the idea nor did I follow the company after the pitch.

Other than that one company, I didn't see anything I have not heard of realistically, atleast 5 times before.

yup. I was excited to read this until....oh no....hot pink comic sans. Had to close me eyes for a second to recalibrate. Don't make it such an effort to have to get over the barrier to the knowledge.

Interesting. It is silly that articles come out with tough grading rankings, based on what? I was just stating an article to further prove the point that not all schools are just a breeze and hand out As, and the higher grades are more likely attributed to having higher performing students, the trends of which become more obvious as competition for college acceptance goes up every year.

I think for my school people did choose the right majors but the Professors were hired based on their ability to bring in research/grant money and had no interest/some even acted disgusted at having to bother to teach a class, therefore alot of the class, despite being high performers in general, found that alot of classes, almost 100% consistent with the Professors mainly focused on research as opposed to teaching, caused lower grades overall. We have a very low endowment and overall much less money than MIT, so the pressure/incentive to hire Professors based on their ability to bring money in the school always trumps their ability to teach or produce a stimulating curriculum in general.

I would say this results in higher curves due to lower test performance in classes, that do not actually result in curving everyone up to an A, and thus is perceived by the outside world as "tough grading" but I think the students are of high caliber, but really it is a result of poor teaching. If the 64 students who have made it through the first two years of a college with high grades, all go into one class, and suddenly the average is 18/100 on an exam, and the 4.0 student makes a 55/100 and also gets an F without a curve, then we could say, maybe this is an issue with the a construct of incentivizing Professors to actually bother teaching and not so much that the students werent cut out for the major.

To add more stats, according to 2013, there were 16,000 undergraduate applicants to my school with an incoming freshman class of 1,204 so similar.

But on the more general point, I don't think the main driver for the disparity between high grades in private schools is due to a scandal or grade inflation, as most of my points support, in general higher performing students get into higher performing schools and those more competitive schools are good, especially with a large applicant pool, at deciding who is capable of doing well there, though I would say MIT is much better at this than my school was.

While this may be true for public universities, private maintain their prestige by student faculty ratios and keeping their incoming classes between 1000-1300 students. You will see most private universities have kept their class size constant in the passed decade while public ones have increased, further supporting the graph shown in this article attesting to the disparity in grades between public and private schools.

I am sure, as 3minus1 mentioned, there are many instances of grade inflation but it seems to vary by major and school. The overall rise in GPA over the years though could be influenced by other things I wonder.

1. jackpirate mentioned more filler courses

2. The internet? If you had a bad professor and a poorly written textbook back in the day, you were kind of screwed outside of working with friends. Today the internet offers pieces of courses and HW examples from all over the world, and things like Coursera and MIT opencourse software are available.

3. MORE AP and IB classes allow students to take college level courses but alot of kids at my college for example, in stead of carrying over the credits, chose to retake Calc I & II, even though they had ACED the AP exams, giving them a freshman year filler of courses that were relatively a breeze for them. I don't believe as many students took AP and IB classes back then. It seems to be the norm nowadays to use this AP/IB edge to actually help yourself ease into college courses be essentially retaking them. Besides, graduating early from a 4 year university is not encouraged, most kids at that level also want the full 4 year experience so their motivation to transfer the credits goes down.

If you think about it, this gives the private universities grades a double edge. you are more likely to be accepted into a competitive private university if you are smart enough to be acing college level courses in highschool, and once you get to the private university, you breeze through those courses by essentially retaking them.

Most students used a combination of all three of these things and obtained 3.8-4.0 Freshman year, allowing for more slack when the harder courses started to come in.

4. Lets not forget aderall meds are handed out like candy these days to help kids work harder longer. Use of these drugs at top private universities is rampant. In many cases, parents seek out medication for their kids claiming ADHD when really what they are saying is "my kid is not working hard enough to meet up to my standards and because he must be as smart as I am that must be because he is distracted with video games, and therefore has ADHD". Many kids seek it out for themselves. Roughly 1/3rd of the kids I knew were taking aderall regularly (either with or without prescription) to pull all nighters on a regular basis to keep up in school.

one of many easily googled sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/education/seeking-academic...

5. As for the difference between public and private schools, competitiveness and cheating (illegal use of adderall included) is contagious and I definitely think competition, cheating, use of drugs to work harder longer (as opposed to enjoyment and recreation), seems to exponentiate itself amongst more competitiveness students, which statistically, are more likely to end up at more competitive schools.

6. Overall, more and more kids are going to college each year, but interestingly, the applicant pools for public universities does increase, the applicant pool for top private universities is exponential each year, allowing private schools to choose the cream of the crop, potentially creating more of a gap between the general caliber of students between private and public universities.

Anecdotal sure but to give you an idea, my friend who went to Johns Hopkins told me stories of kids ripping pages out of textbooks in the libraries so other students had no access, and I've heard this happens at top law schools as well. I witnessed in my private university even as a freshman. In many cases these are kids whose entire identities and their parents value of them depend on acing through ivy league schools, and failure (failure in these case being Bs)is not an option. I can't speak for the average public school, but I feel as if this mindset is less likely to be the norm here.

one of many sources to help support pt 5 & 6: http://nypost.com/2013/08/25/tutor-reveals-ivy-admissions-ma...

7. Someone else mentioned visa students who are TAs are pressured to give good grades for good reviews. With underclassmen on student visas, the competition seems to go up and they are in my experience more likely to engage in competitive behavior or cheating or aderall abuse because the stakes of failing out are also alot higher for them, but it seems to have the opposite effect if you are an undergrad versus be a grad grading TA trying to get good reviews from undergrads.

Anecdotal story, but proves that not all private schools use grade inflation liberally:

At my college, which is a private university ranked top 50, goes up and down each year by 20 or so in rankings, we are not top 5 but usually in top 25, grading is really tough and we were actually ranked top 3 toughest graders lumped in with MIT, except MIT exempts students from their entire freshman GPA (I've heard) to help with suicide and other such issues. Twice I was curved down because grades were so good we were suspected of cheating. The average GPA at my college was 2.7 when I graduated in 2012 and that is after 10% of students fail out. I wish I experienced more grade inflation at my school!

In the three cases of severe grade inflation during my undergrad career, the averages on the exams were 20/100 or 40/100, and they had to curve up 30-40 pts just get a third of the class to pass, and still that meant most kids got Bs or Cs. I'll never forget when we got 18/100 average for 64 kids in a class and we were all Engineering Majors. Different topic but I believe that results from hiring Professors who are better at research (brings in funding) than they are at teaching. Theres no reason statstically why the average of 64 students junior year of one of the hardest Engineering Majors at a top Engineering School should all be failing unless of course the Professor sucks at teaching.

So in this case, there was severe grade inflation, but that did not results in higher GPAs overall relative to other schools, it just helped A Professor not get in trouble for being responsible for causing the entire Electrical Engineering Department to fail and have to retake her course, which would have definitely put this Professor under review...

hmm Well considering heroine use has doubled in the passed 5 years, and doubled from 2012-2013, and that three-quarters of all heroine users now started out by getting addicted to their prescribed pharmaceutical equivalent, due to the delay in the administration cracking down on the pharmaceutical pill farms who incentivized the healthcare system to hand these out like candy with anyone who used the word "pain, back pain or anxiety", I would say, yes, psychiatric drugs and painkillers, are causing more harm than good. We are in the middle of the biggest heroine epidemic in U.S. History.

The Huffington Post has three articles in 2015 detailing this epidemic and providing the statistics on this for anyone interested. This one is the most in depth and compelling I have seen so far: http://projects.huffingtonpost.com/dying-to-be-free-heroin-t...

The best part is there is a compelling treatment, but it is stigmatized in favor of abstinence/cold turkey teaching. Of course there is no data to support this is more effective (in fact a disturbing amount of data to show otherwise) but alot of politics of holier than thou to support the failing system. Read more about this tragedy here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-...