Being new to CC I’m reading through old acceptance threads, both this years and last years. There are two things that surprise me. One is how many highly qualified kids get rejected to schools that I would assume would admit them. The other is how many kids have UW 4.0 GPAs. I’m sure CC is likely a cross section of parents and kids who are more invested in academics etc but it’s still surprising. At my son’s school of 2300 (550-600 per class) perhaps the top 5-10 kids in his class have GPAs that high, perhaps fewer.
Are 4.0 UW GPAs more common at other schools? Maybe I’m reading into some of this too much.
There is rampant grade inflation in many US high schools. Many studies have estimated around 1/2 of US graduating students have A averages (which aren’t necessarily 4.0 unweighted GPAs).
Obviously course rigor is very important in college admissions as well. A 4.0 in regular classes isn’t superior to a 3.8 in all honors, for one example.
Many HSs have a ‘school profile’ that will share GPA ranges/averages and/or deciles as well as how grades and GPAs are determined…this helps AOs understand the situation at each high school. These profiles also share course offerings, average AP test scores, etc.
Suffice it to say that a 4.0 from a high school with many kids with an A average, is different from a 4.0 at a highly rigorous high school. One giveaway that there is grade inflation at a given HS is a relatively high proportion of A average GPAs with a relatively high percentage of AP test scores of 3 or below.
At my D’s HS the top 15% of the class had UW 4.0s GPAs. But - private, college prep HS where 99% of students went on to 4 year colleges. There were 8 NMF in D’s class and 25 students out of 200 were in the 98th+ percentile for SAT/ACT. Most years around 50 students per class were AP scholars or higher.
I guess I wonder if/how this is being taken into consideration by AOs this year. It seems the SAT was one of the most obvious ways that was accounted for.
It’s always been part of the AOs jobs to understand the deal at each high school in their region. Many colleges have invested in significant additional training for the AOs as to how to evaluate apps without test scores once they went test optional.
Only unweighted at our high school and no ranking. Last student graduating with a 4.0 was 5+ years ago. My kids (and me!) have learned to take all the gpa posting with a grain of salt. Their school also only grades academic cores - so P/F for pe and the arts - no A+, but +/- for other letter grades.
We have learned it is all
about the school profile provided by the school counselor - feel bad when I see people posting here that their school either doesn’t have one or it is outdated, as it seems like a valuable tool.
I have 5 kids, my oldest had maybe 5 B’s as final grades mostly honors/AP’s, the next more A’s than B’s mostly honors/AP’s, the next had a B in honors freshman English and a B+ in AP calc, 9 AP’s and the rest honors, dd21 had a B+ in honors freshman English 7 AP’s the rest honors, ds21 has mostly A’s 4 AP’s mostly all honors. I think the highest weighted W GPA at our HS is a 4.3 (honors and AP’s are weighted the same). My kids knew that the only way they could go OOS was with merit, the first 2 stayed in state due to B’s, as will ds21.
Definitely different between schools, but I think that comes out in the school profiles. My daughter’s GPA seemed low both compared to many on here and the average admit at her college, yet her standardized (ACT and AP) tests were in line or better with what those better GPAs were posting here, and her school profile made it clear that getting a 4.0 GPA is not easy there at all. So imo a 4.0 is not the same everywhere, but the colleges have generally figured it out how it differs.
There are high schools with multiple valedictorians, lol. They take a percentage of the class or name everyone with some gpa bar.
I sometimes think the idea of rampant grade inflation is inflated. It seems to assume a teacher takes B level work and labels it an A. The better question is how easy is that course in the first place, with that teacher. And there are enough who teach to the AP exam.
But you can only deal with what you get. And there are only so many spots available in a freshman class. And there’s holistic, which looks at more than stats.
This is the essence of grade inflation, since an average of 15% having perfect GPAs, while barely 12.5% had SAT/ACT scores above 1480-1500. Moreover, I am absolutely certain that the high schoolk put a lot of effort in preparing kids fro the PSATs, SATs and ACTs.
As for 99% attending 4 year colleges, sorry, but that is much more a function of income than it is of achievement. The biggest reason that students attend a 4 year college or do not attend college on graduation is that they cannot afford it. That brings us back to SAT scores - I think that a lot has already been said about the relationship between income and SAT scores.
So 15% having 4.0 GPAs is, indeed, grade inflation.
Private high schools, especially those which serve mostly high income families, are under a lot of pressure to inflate grades. They live off of tuition and donations from these very same parents. Of course, public high schools in wealthy districts are also under enormous pressure to inflate grades, since wealthy Americans have been considering high grades for their kids as their due for a few decades now.
At my school it is really hard to attain a 4.0 unweighted GPA. Everyone usually gets at least one elusive teacher that it’s impossible to get an A in. Some sucker will get 4 of those teachers. I have friends who had 4.0 all during 9th grade and then got it ruined in 10th grade just in regular 10th grade English. Some lose it in Math or AP US History. I don’t know of any valedictorian that had the highest weighted GPA that also had a 4.0 unweighted but we do graduate 1 or 2 that have perfect 4.0 unweighted. The difference is usually those are not the ones that wind up going to the Ivy Leagues because they did not take the full rigor or highest math classes offered.
I would say another good indicator of HS rigor is the list of colleges that a HS has sent students to over the past 3-5 years. If it includes a high percentage of Ivies and other high academic programs, chances are the rigor of that particular HS is pretty decent.
My D’s high school was part of the city voucher program. Much more diverse both racially and economically than the public HS D would have gone too.
Vast majority of students chases merit over prestige.
School also had Competitive entry. High disciplinary bar. High bar too for taking AP courses. My D’s class started out with 250 students and she graduated with 205. There were a number of students who couldn’t handle the course work and went back to their public HS or got expelled.
Students were very very well prepared for college rigor.
low income, low SES public high schools are also under major pressure to inflate grades – to get their students to pass and graduate! for sure we saw grade inflation at my S20’s low SES urban high school. They just want the kids to pass.
one way of gauging this was ACT scores. About 2% of my son’s graduating class had ACT scores 32+; yet a huge amount had 4.0s UW. ( midwest state has an annual statewide publication that recognizes any kid with a 32+ each year) Plus, school doesn’t have a minus or plus system; so a low A- = a 4.0. Not that way in college for sure!
I know several engaged, active kids with 4.0s - but not the test scores to correlate - that would have liked the system this year of GPAs for merit! (like U of Arizona). Kid did have some good teachers, and definitely reality checks about diversity and low SES situations by attending that school.
Grade inflation and uneven grading are big problems. UW 4.0s are so common here on CC that when an applicant with UW GPA of, say 3.85, is often told his/her GPA was too low (it happened on at least one thread I read just today). On the other hands, there’re some high schools where no one ever gets 4.0 UW, even as they produce dozens of NMSF every year.
I’ve seen several kids with UW 4.0s and SAT/ACT that don’t track with that kind of GPA. I believe many admissions are holistic but I’m not convinced others give much weight to where the applicant went to school. Cal Poly for example appears to use that MCA calculation which is holistic in that it considered EC, work etc but I can’t see how it factors one high school any differently from another and GPA is a substantial part of their calculation.
It seems this is a good year to have an inflated GPA.
For regular courses, consider how students earning a particular grade do on the SAT subject test. However, due to the relative rarity of SAT subject test use these days, that information may be hard to come by.
The CPSLO MCA is not really holistic, since it just adds points for various categories (and ECs and paid work are just counting hours, rather than a subjective judgement). An older version (before SAT/ACT was dropped from consideration) is shown at https://mca.netlify.app/ .