which colleges have the most grade inflation?

The reasons were complex. GPAs actually dropped on average by 0.04 points from 2002 to 2012. Most members of the Ivy League are notorious for it. Despite this limitation, our numbers stay almost exactly the same with every sampling. No surprise that Brown is #1. comments sorted by Best Top New Controversial Q&A [deleted] Additional comment actions lol thx for this -fellow premed College grading on an A-F scale has been in widespread use for about 100 years. Rojstaczer and Healy's findings indicate that grade inflation is more pervasive in private colleges. This is because courses for these majors are often meant to weed-out those unprepared for medicine and similarly high-stakes careers. In looking at student grades, exam scores, and graduate rates from 2001 to 2012, we find evidence of more lax standards in grading. Wyatt Murdoch has been teaching middle school and high school social studies in Three Forks for two years. They can also lead to other achievements: admission to graduate school, honors and awards, and more. Then grades rose dramatically. In our 2018 analysis of thousands of student profiles on our platform (which include self-reported GPAs), RippleMatch found that Ivy League schools rank as the worst offenders of grade inflation, with some of the average student GPAs falling in the A / A- range. However, with. Once students have been admitted, we have said to them, You have what it takes to succeed. Then its our job to help them succeed.. Download our guide Beyond The Ivy League for more information on expanding your recruitment reach and finding students at the top public schools, HBCUs, and HSIs. Grade inflation occurs when institutions award students with higher grades than they might deserve, increasing the overall average grade received. Earlier this year, Williams College faculty voted to begin weighting an A+ as a 4.33 instead of a 4.00. They need to be the ones to create incentives to bring back honest grading. Its also worth mentioning that most colleges, including top-tier ones, do not distinguish between an A and an A+ when it comes to GPA weighting (4.0 is used for both). In part, these are what help you land a great first job after college. GPAs dropped dramatically, down to 3.28 in 2005. WebWhich colleges have the most grade inflation? (This is not true across the board, however; according to the above survey, in Harvards class of 2016, social science majors had the lowest average GPA 3.62 while students in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences had an average GPA of 3.64 and those concentrating in the Sciences had an average of a 3.70.) Its so incrementally slow a process that its easy to see why an individual instructor (or university administrator or leader) can delude himself into believing that its all due to better teaching or better students. Grade Variation Between Disciplines and As a Function of School Selectivity. Heres an attempt at a simplified explanation. For those interested in even more detail, here are some links to other material. Student course evaluations are still used for tenure and promotion. According to a. , 92 percent of faculty who responded said they believe the university has grade inflation. Image: KEITH MUSEKE. Additionally, the UC Berkeley student newspaper, The Daily Californian, has spoken about Berkeley grade deflation, pointing out that the university typically awards lower grades than the Ivy League institutions on this list. Significant grade inflation is present everywhere and contemporary rates of change in GPA are on average the same for public and private schools. But the consumer era is different. By clicking Accept, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies. The fact that we are getting the same numbers (that agree with historical studies) with every update gives us confidence that our results not only accurately reflect trends in grading over time but also accurately measure average GPAs and average grade distributions for any year for which we have data. Many top-tier colleges and universities are accused of grade inflation. As part of the motion, it was revealed that an A+ had been awarded 212 times in the 2009-2010 academic year, while it was awarded 426 times in the 2018-2019 academic year, suggesting that grades had seen an uptick in the past decade. Recent inflation rates are relatively low at many flagship state schools in the Midwest. 1 spot is likely due to their extreme grade inflation. We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. In part, these are what help you land a great first job after college. A cookie set by YouTube to measure bandwidth that determines whether the user gets the new or old player interface. National Trends in Grade Inflation, American Colleges and Keep in mind that most colleges dont release GPA data, so the evidence is largely anecdotal. Like, say that I got 99 (just an example) for a subject. If grades are a form of academic currency, then grade inflation results in the devaluation of that currency. It sounds amazing right but the university acknowledges how many students have grades in the same range. Students are highly disengaged from learning, are studying less than ever, and are less literate. Today, our attitude is we do our screening of students at the time of admission. What about grade changes over the last fifty years at individual institutions? Most members of the Ivy League are notorious for it. GPAs for a graduating class can be expected to be higher than the GPA equivalent. But if you attend a college with grade inflation, that 4.0 may not feel like as much of an accomplishment is it would be if you attended a school that wasnt known to inflate grades. This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. 2013 talking head interview about 2012 paper, here. The study says that the average high school GPA has risen 0.11 points since 1998, and more than twice that at private, nonreligious schools. Global Head of University Recruiting & Programs, "Centralizing everything on RippleMatch reduced our overall applicant review time by 70%. Breaking from the Ivy League domination, this UC system school is right below Columbia University with its 3.59 average. Will employers and graduate schools know? A former university chancellor from the University of Wisconsin, David Ward, summed up this change well in 2010: That philosophy (the old approach to teaching) is no longer acceptable to the public or faculty or anyone else. We collected data from over 170 schools, updated this website, wrote a research paper, collected more data the following year and wrote another research paper. While GPA can be a great indicator of a students work ethic and skill, grade inflation complicates its ability to serve as an objective tool for assessing a candidate. While local increases in student quality may account for part of the grade rises seen at some institutions, the national trend cannot be explained by this influence. In the early 1980s, college grades began to rise again, but at a slow and barely identifiable pace. Essentially, the gap keeps widening between the high and low GPA schools. Another Ivy League takes the fifth spot with an average 3.6 GPA. It is said that grade inflation is by far the worst in Ivy League schools. In 2003, Wellesley approved a grade deflation policy where the mean grade in 100-level and 200-level courses with 10 or more students was expected to be no higher than 3.33 (B+). The designation doesnt speak to student performance so much as it speaks to the colleges policies. Worst college regarding state school access with only 41.3% of uk students coming from state schools in 2018 (average is 62.5%) Worst college regarding for admitting students from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. These are not easy data to find or get in the quantities we need to make assessments. Does Yale have grade deflation? The influence of adjunct faculty on grades has been overstated. That was true for over fifty years. Most recently, about 43 percent of all letter grades given were As, an increase of 28 percentage points since 1960 and 12 percentage points since 1988. Stevens Institute of Technology 3.51. The designation doesnt speak to student performance so much as it speaks to the colleges policies. Americas professors and college administrators have been promoting a fiction that college students routinely study long and hard, participate actively in class, write impressive papers, and ace their tests. Schools want students to graduate and land good jobs or go onto graduate school this reflects well on them so grade inflation is sometimes standard practice. Not only did all the relevant measures get a lot worse in January, but the prior three months, October through December, were revised higher much like the CPI inflation readings a couple of weeks ago showing substantially greater inflation momentum at the end of the year than originally shown. As were twice as common as they were before the 1960s, accounting for 30% of all A-F grades. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. In this article, the author argues that a significant contributing factor-perhaps the single most important factor has been the institution of the now almost universal practice of administering anonymous, multiple-choice student evaluations of I will acknowledge your contribution by name or if you prefer, the data's origin will remain anonymous. Throughout the 1990s, grades rose again with the emergence of the student as consumer model of higher education that demands a transcript that can justify a An anti-inflation policy was implemented in the 2005 academic year. The damage of grade inflation has largely been done as theres no hope of returning to a grading scheme where a C is average. WebSociologists have observed a rise in grade inflation for nearly two decades, particularly in higher education. At those schools, an A- means being one step further away from receiving formal recognition as an outstanding student; a B+ can be devastating.. 2012 research paper on grading in America, here. Maybe its time for another Committee on Raising the Standard 128 years later. 'name': 'Chancing Middle CTA', They can also lead to other achievements: admission to graduate school, honors and awards, and more. In 2015, 42 percent of grades A high average GPA is often the biggest indicator of grade inflation. These two Ivy Leagues are tied for third place with a 3.63 average GPA, coming in right behind Stanford University. . Additionally, many of their graduate or professional schools such as the American Language Program, the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, the School of the Arts, the Business School, the School of Journalism, the Medical School, and the Psychoanalytic Training Program, are excluded from the standard grading system, opting for alternate scales such as, Breaking from the Ivy League domination, this UC system school is right below Columbia University with its 3.59 average. Get Report 2. Where has the fashion of rising grades ended? For example, our dataset suggests that at a small number of private schools in the country solid As (and A+ grades) are so common that a GPA in excess of 3.75 is now required to achieve any level of graduation with honors. When the war ended so did the rise in grades. Performance cookies are used to understand and analyze the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors. Early on, it was sometimes referred to as scientific grading. Until the Vietnam War, C was the most common grade on college campuses. Not to mention, the 6-foot-2, 244-pound Phelps ran the 40-yard dash in 4.55 seconds an excellent time for a player his size. According to a 2013 article in the Harvard Crimson, the median grade at Harvard was an A-minus , while the most common grade was an A. Some administrators and professors have tried to ascribe much of the increase in GPA in the consumer era to improvements in student quality. Why? If you see any errors, please report them. At Texas State, a historically low inflator, the average graduates GPA has migrated from a C+ to a B. That number may seem low in comparison to four-year college data, but it is similar to the average GPA of first-year and second-year students at a typical four-year public school. I found that grade inflation, while waning beginning in the mid-1970s, resurfaced in the mid-1980s. Yale cracked down on overly-generous grading after a, found that some departments mainly awarded As and A-s, which was close to having no grading at all., Harvard had a similar problem with grade inflation, with its former. Similarly, top liberal arts colleges often have grade inflation. By the late 1980s, GPAs were rising at a rate of 0.1 points per decade (see top chart), a rate 1/4 of that experienced during the Vietnam era (the pace was so slow that until the 2000s it wasnt entirely clear that it was a national phenomenon). There were some people who maintained grades were rising in the Vietnam era because students in the 1960s and early 1970s were better than those over the previous fifty years, but the conventional wisdom was that those claims were unfounded. LinkedIn sets this cookie from LinkedIn share buttons and ad tags to recognize browser ID. routinely award high grades to many students, while few students receive Cs, Ds, or Fs. I converted these data into GPA using formulae that I developed using data at other schools for which we have both GPA and grade distribution data or through direct calibration with limited data on GPAs at these institutions. Instead they were customers. Chris has done the lions share of data collection. It does not store any personal data. Well also help you navigate the admissions process and find your fit. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. Grade deflation, in contrast, means that its very difficult to earn an A or B, and students routinely receive Cs Ds, or Fs. Harvard had a similar problem with grade inflation, with its former Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris revealing that the median grade at Harvard was an A-, while the most frequently awarded grade was an A. In our 2010 Teachers College Record paper, we found, similar to Bowen and Bok and Vars and Bowen, a 0.1 relationship between a 100-point increase in SAT and GPA using data from over 160 institutions with a student population of over two million. We document that college completion rates have increased since the 1990s, after declining in the 1970s and 1980s. It sounds amazing right but the university acknowledges how many students have grades in the same range. For those who liked the old blue-line (and Ive seen the PowerPoint slides of college administrators whove used this graph and liked to use that line to compare their schools grade inflation which they usually publicly avow doesnt exist with national averages), the rate of grade inflation for the new dataset over the entire 50 years of college grade inflation (both the Vietnam era and the consumer era) averages 0.14 GPA points per decade, the same as it was in our previous update. HubSpot sets this cookie to keep track of sessions and to determine if HubSpot should increment the session number and timestamps in the __hstc cookie. However, Sanchez found grade Sign up for your free CollegeVine account to get started! July 7, 2016 update: Added some Canadian schools and updated data for three four-year American schools. These two Ivy Leagues are tied for third place with a 3.63 average GPA, coming in right behind Stanford University. Many professors, certainly not all or even a majority, became convinced that grades were not a useful tool for motivation, were not a valid means of evaluation and created a harmful authoritarian environment for learning. Facebook sets this cookie to show relevant advertisements to users by tracking user behaviour across the web, on sites that have Facebook pixel or Facebook social plugin. Its perhaps worth noting that if you strictly applied the above grading changes in a typical class of 100 at a four-year college today, youd run out of B students to elevate to B+ students in about seven years. Data on the GPAs for each institution where I dont have a confidentiality agreement can be found at the bottom of this web page. The test_cookie is set by doubleclick.net and is used to determine if the user's browser supports cookies. It is a limitation of our work that we cant sample the same institutions every time. Installed by Google Analytics, _gid cookie stores information on how visitors use a website, while also creating an analytics report of the website's performance. Its not surprising that schools with the highest tuition not only tend to have the highest grades, but have grades that continue to rise significantly. A study by the University of California system of matriculates showed that SAT scores explained less than 14% of the variance in GPA. Only 11 percent of seniors that year reported a GPA lower than a B+ average. In our 2018 analysis of thousands of student profiles on our platform. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. Our free chancing engine takes into account your history, background, test scores, and extracurricular activities to show you your real chances of admissionand how to improve them. My own personal observation is that students at relatively high-grading schools are so nervous about grades today - paradoxically this nervousness seems to increase with increased grade inflation - that the shrug sometimes turns into a panic. This is because courses for these majors are often meant to weed-out those unprepared for medicine and similarly high-stakes careers. Which Colleges Have Grade Inflation? WebGrade inflation, in my theory, also affects college applications. Sure, you may get some satisfaction out of having plenty of As on your transcript, but what if everyone else is getting As, too? The average GPA change since 2000 at both public and private schools is 0.10 points per decade, but the range is wide. Some schools that were relatively immune to grade inflation in the 1990s, such as University of Nebraska-Kearney and Purdue, have experienced significant consumer-era inflation in the 2000s. Historical numbers on average percent As in this update are the same as those found in our 2012 paper (which had much more extensive data). Web529 College Savings Plans By far the most popular savings vehicles, 529 plans offer tax deferred growth with deductions at the state level depending on the state. These cookies track visitors across websites and collect information to provide customized ads. There is less variability in inflation rate at private schools in comparison to public schools. A variation of the _gat cookie set by Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager to allow website owners to track visitor behaviour and measure site performance. Earlier this year, Williams College faculty voted to begin weighting an A+ as a 4.33 instead of a 4.00. The corresponding article stated that the cum laude cutoff for the class of 2017 was a 3.80, which indicated that 30 percent of students graduated with this or a higher GPA. Yale is also often accused of grade inflation. Other schools such as Wesley College, Northwestern University, Fordham University, Bates College, Reed College, and many more have also developed grading The New York post documents disturbing news about local public school graduates. I want to thank those who have helped us by either sending data or telling us where we can find data. Indiana, Iowa State, James Madison, Kent State, Kenyon, Lehigh, Louisiana State, Miami (Ohio), Michigan, Middlebury, Minnesota, Minnesota-Morris, Missouri, Montclair State, Nebraska-Kearney, North Carolina, North Carolina-Greensboro, North Carolina-Asheville, North Dakota, Northern Arizona, Northern Iowa, Northern Michigan, Northwestern, Oberlin, Penn State, Princeton, Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Purdue, Purdue-Calumet, Rensselaer, Roanoke, Rockhurst, Rutgers, San Jose State, South Carolina, South Florida, Southern Connecticut, Southern Utah, St. Olaf, SUNY-Oswego, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas State, UC-Berkeley, UC-San Diego, UC-Santa Barbara, Utah, Vanderbilt, Virginia, Wake Forest, Washington-Seattle, Washington State, West Georgia, Western Michigan, William & Mary, Wisconsin, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and Yale. Since the last significant release of the survey, faculty members at Princeton University and Wellesley College, among other institutions, have debated ways to limit Similarly, top liberal arts colleges often have grade inflation. That transition occurred two decades earlier than it did at four-year schools. Students were no longer thought of as acolytes searching for knowledge. For example, the average GPA of Reed College graduates hovered between 3.12 and 3.20 from 1991 and 2008 as a result of a school-wide grading policy. Grade inflation shouldnt play a huge role in your decision to attend (or not attend) a college, but other factors, such as the programs it offers and its academic rigor, should. The charts below examine the magnitude of the rate of grade inflation for almost all of the institutions for which we have sufficient data to examine contemporary trends (some data, in particular data from private schools, comes attached with confidentiality agreements). Few would disagree that grade inflation is a major problem at colleges and universities across the country. Not all of the grade rises observed at these schools are due to inflation. Its about helping students look good on paper, helping them to succeed. Its about creating more and more A students. A is by far the most common grade on both four-year and two-year college campuses (more than 42 percent of grades). Only 11 percent of seniors that year reported a GPA lower than a B+ average. Additionally, many of their graduate or professional schools such as the American Language Program, the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, the School of the Arts, the Business School, the School of Journalism, the Medical School, and the Psychoanalytic Training Program, are excluded from the standard grading system, opting for alternate scales such as pass/fail. Cal State University-FullertonHarvey Mudd CollegeReed CollegeSimon Fraser University (Canada) 'template_id': '9064' In the 1960s, full-time male college students were exempt from the military draft. The above mentioned studies indicate that student quality increases cannot account for the magnitude of grade inflation observed. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with relevant ads and marketing campaigns. The bulk of grade inflation at these institutions is due to other factors. In 2014, that policy was abandoned. There are no schools in our dataset that have been untouched by rising grades over the last 50 years. There are definitely schools known for grade inflation just like there are schools known for grade deflation, i.e. Unlike with public schools, there is no correlation between GPA and contemporary inflation rates. Few would disagree that grade inflation is a major problem at colleges and universities across the country. RippleMatch is an AI-powered recruitment platform that matches early-career candidates with high-quality jobs and internships. Some schools or departments within schools are known by students to give out lots of high grades for average effort -students (and their parents) are consumers paying for a good degree. Grade inflation erodes confidence in the whole system of gradeinflation.com, copyright 2002, Stuart Rojstaczer, www.stuartr.com, no fee for not-for-profit use. Institutions comprising this average were chosen strictly because they have either published grade data or have sent recent data (2012 or newer) to the author covering a span of at least eleven years. These schools data show the full extent of both the Vietnam era rise and the consumer era rise up until 2012-15 (the years of our most current data for schools). This isn't exactly correct. It contains the domain, initial timestamp (first visit), last timestamp (last visit), current timestamp (this visit), and session number (increments for each subsequent session). There are other private schools that have restricted high grades. What is true is that both the humanities and the sciences have witnessed rising grades since the 1960s, but the starting points for the rise were different. Columbia University uses a standard A-F grading scale for most of their individual colleges, but those students can also receive an A+, boosting their GPA above a 4.0. Unlike Stanford, offer A+ grades to students and stick to the 4.0 grading scale. Meanwhile, what might be considered A or B work at another school is not awarded high grades at a school with grade deflation. The designation doesnt speak to student performance so much as it speaks to the colleges policies. Private schools in our database, as noted in the text above and shown in the figure below, have higher GPAs than public schools. Schools with grade inflation routinely award high grades to many students, while few students receive Cs, Ds, or Fs. ", "With one click of a button, I can get tons of great candidates from underrepresented groups.". In the process of writing that article, I collected data on trends in grading from about 30 colleges and universities. GPAs dropped by 0.05 points in 2005 and As were no longer the most popular grade. 15 Summer Programs in New Jersey for High Schoolers, 11 Remote Internships for High School Students, The 30 Best Colleges for Environmental Science, 10 Tips for When a College Visits Your High School, 10 College Scholarships for Hispanic Women to Save You Thousands. While both colleges have recognized their problems with grade inflation, their shared third place spot begs the question if any improvements were made. At 3.68, the average GPA of Stanford students is high, hovering around a solid A-. Then the percentage of As drops slightly over the last third of the consumer era for which we have data. In the Vietnam era, grades rose partly to keep male students from flunking out (and ending up being drafted into war). A is the most common grade at community colleges. Its stupid because it ignores the quality and sizes of the cohorts. My attitude about these top-down clamps on grades (to be fair, Princetons past effort to deflate grades was not strictly top-down; the change was approved overwhelmingly by the faculty) is positive. The result is widespread panic about grade inflation at elite schools. Ive simply taken every data point Chris has collected, put it in a spreadsheet and plotted averages every five years (smoothed over a five year interval) from 1963 to 2008 and then added 2011 (to plot the most recent data for comparison). That said, a few schools have had modest to negligible recent grade rises (and rarely, modest drops in grades) and have relatively low GPAs, as will be discussed in the next section. Like with undergraduate admissions, theyll evaluate your GPA in the context of your school. In a survey of the Harvard class of 2016, respondents had an average reported GPA of 3.65 nearly equivalent to an A-. Some deans and presidents are concerned about educational rigor, but they do eventually leave and are not usually replaced with like-minded people. Not shown on the graph (and not included in our estimate of a 0.10 rise per decade rise in GPA for private schools since 2000) because its an extreme outlier is Wellesley. Other uncategorized cookies are those that are being analyzed and have not been classified into a category as yet. Amid chronic absenteeism, widespread grade We have over 50,000 active student users from over 500 universities and determine the average GPA of each university based on the composite data from our users at each university. Adelphi, Alabama, Albion, Alaska-Anchorage, Allegheny, Amherst, Appalachian State, Arkansas, Ashland, Auburn, Ball State, Bates, Baylor, Boston U, Boston College, Bowdoin, Bowling Green, Bradley, Brigham Young, Brown, Bucknell, Butler, Carleton, Case Western, Central Florida, Central Michigan, Centre, Charleston, Chicago, Clemson, Coastal Carolina, College of New Jersey, Colorado, Colorado State, Columbia, Columbia (Chicago), Columbus State, Connecticut, Cornell, CSU-Fresno, CSU-Fullerton, CSU-Los Angeles, CSU-Monterey, CSU-Northridge, CSU-Sacramento, CSU-San Bernardino, Dartmouth, Delaware, DePauw, Drury, Duke, Duquesne, Florida, Florida Atlantic, Florida Gulf Coast, Florida International, Florida State, Francis Marion, Furman, Gardner-Webb, Georgetown, George Washington, Georgia, Georgia State, Georgia Tech, Gettysburg, Gonzaga, Grand Valley State, Grinnell, Hampden-Sydney, Harvard, Harvey Mudd, Haverford, Hawaii Hilo, Hawaii-Manoa, Hilbert, Hope, Houston, Idaho, Idaho State, Illinois, Illinois-Chicago, Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas, Kansas State, Kennesaw State, Kent State, Kentucky, Kenyon, Knox, Lafayette, Lander, Lehigh, Lindenwood, Louisiana State, Macalester, Maryland, Messiah, Miami of Ohio, Michigan, Michigan-Flint, Middlebury, Minnesota, Minnesota-Morris, Minot State, Missouri, Missouri State, Missouri Western, MIT, Monmouth, Montana State, Montclair State, Nebraska-Kearney, Nebraska, Nevada-Las Vegas, Nevada-Reno, North Carolina, North Carolina-Asheville, North Carolina-Greensboro, North Carolina State, North Dakota, Northern Arizona, Northern Iowa, North Florida, North Texas, Northwestern, NYU, Ohio State, Ohio University, Oklahoma, Old Dominion, Oregon, Oregon State, Penn State, Pennsylvania, Pomona, Portland State, Princeton, Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, Purdue, Purdue-Calumet, Reed, Rensselaer, Rice, Roanoke, Rockhurst, Rutgers, St. Olaf, San Jose State, Siena, Smith, South Carolina, South Carolina State, Southern California, Southern Connecticut, Southern Illinois, Southern Methodist, Southern Utah, South Florida, Spelman, Stanford, Stetson, SUNY-Oswego, Swarthmore, Tennessee-Chattanooga, Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Christian, Texas-San Antonio, Texas State, Towson, Tufts, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, UC-San Diego, UC-Santa Barbara, Utah, Utah State, Valdosta State, Vanderbilt, Vassar, Vermont, Villanova, Virginia, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Washington, Washington and Lee, Washington State, Washington University (St. Louis), Wellesley, Western Michigan, Western Washington, West Florida, West Georgia, Wheaton, Wheeling Jesuit, Whitman, William and Mary, Williams, Winthrop, Wisconsin, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Wisconsin-Oshkosh, Wright State. live oak school district calendar,

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