I would exclude MIT from that list, but the rest of those schools basically have a huge reputation for grade inflation -- i.e., once you get in, you won't be given a bad GPA because you're paying so much. Grading people legitimately based on competence would piss of the parents/donors too much. Curious to hear your take on this.

My impression is that grade inflation is definitely a thing, I am not so sure that it is for the reasons you suggest (pissing off parents/donors/people paying for degree).

What grade inflation really means is that for many, if not all, majors at a school like Harvard, you can take a path of classes that will end up with you completing your major and having a high GPA.

That said, there are certainly classes that will be much less nice to you when grading and have a self-selected group of students. My guess is that if JS has enough people from, say, Harvard, they will know the difference between a student who took hard upper level courses to complete their major vs. just the simple basics.

In terms of why this grade inflation is so prevalent, one reason I think is that faculty want to have students in their courses/run a "superstar" course, and students select classes with the easiest grading policy. Schools like MIT (and Princeton as well) specifically combat this and so are known for grade deflation.

I was being sarcastic because I'm pretty sure it would not impact it in anyway.