Correction Appended

BOSTON

OVER the span of his college career, Andrew Lipovsky has taken summer courses at Pace and Columbia in New York, spent three semesters at Northeastern here, and then transferred across town to Boston University last year. While he has majored in business, he has incidentally performed a kind of science experiment, in which he has been the control and those four universities the variables.

He earned grade-point averages of 3.2 at Columbia, 3.5 at Northeastern and 3.8 at Pace, a range solidly in the A's and B's. Then, in his two years at Boston University, he compiled only a 2.4, the borderline between B minus and C plus. When he had to repeat some of the same business courses at Boston that he already had taken at Northeastern, part of the transfer process, his marks dropped by as much as two full grade points.

The conclusion Mr. Lipovsky drew, an extremely common one among Boston University students, is that he was the victim of "grade deflation." By that euphemism, the students mean that, bending to unofficial but pervasive pressure from the university administration, professors force marks to conform to a curve.

"They want to make it harder," said Mr. Lipovsky, a 20-year-old from Manhattan. "They want a B.U. grade to mean something. But here's the problem. When I apply to grad school, the admissions officers don't know of this policy. It's not written down. The administration denies there is grade deflation."