<p>The article, from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine of Jan 9, 2005, focuses on Belmont Hill, a private school for boys (jacket and tie required) in the Boston suburb of Belmont. Although the school's median SAT is 1360, 75 percent of the students have received at least one C during their years at Belmont Hill.<br>
Belmont Hill used to be a feeder school for HYP, but now, students are expanding their lists of schools to which they apply, and Belmont Hill's tough grading policy may be hurting them. In each of the last two years, a Belmont Hill student who applied to Michigan was rejected but admitted to Harvard.
This is a fascinating article on one school's attempt to buck the grade inflation trend. I'm sorry I can't provide the link; perhaps someone else can.</p>
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There was a time, decades ago, when bright, hard-working students at many high schools routinely earned B's and C's. But at most schools, those days are long gone. To hear admissions officers at elite colleges tell it, today's typical applicant has nearly straight A's; and thanks to the prevalence of "weighted" AP or honors courses, it's not uncommon to see students with a GPA of 4.2 on a 4.0 scale. Rather than applaud this super-achieving generation, some observers label this escalation "grade inflation," and they think it's a problem. And some praise Belmont Hill as a bulwark against this trend.
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<p>We had a parent come in the other day and say that their son just couldn't get a C.</p>
<p>Here's the link:</p>
<p>perhaps Michigan has caught the Tufts Syndrome. At our HS last year, we had a couple of top kids that did not get into Berkeley or UCLA (state residents), but are off to an Ivy and a selective LAC. Go figure.</p>
<p>I think the article tried to suggest that for students from schools such as Belmont Hill, where there is no grade inflation and a C is an average grade (for the school), it's tougher to get into schools that are more stats-driven than into schools that take a more holistic look at applicants. Appending a school profile does not really help with schools that deal with high volumes of applications.</p>
<p>To expand on what Marite said - there's also the phenomena of "knowing" a high school. When a college counselor can explain that, in a class of 25 exceptionally gifted boys, only one got an A, admissions can consider that. They would realize that, in a normal high school, the kid would be an A student and then get GPA weighing. Belmont Hill used to have that sort of relationship with Harvard et al. </p>
<p>They also said that, in cases like UMich, they'll just stick the GPA and SATs into a number-cruncher and toss people without even looking at the application. The whole school-profile thing doesn't matter as much then.</p>
<p>I have known teachers who would raise a grade one level if the student did an extra credit report. Some kids would do four reports in a semester....An A student wondering why they got a 1 on the AP.</p>
<p>As a teacher, I gave a student a D on a paper and she started crying....she had never gotten less than an A before. The next day her dad came to school and I was prepared for a debate but instead he said "thanks." He had been wondering when someone was going to tell her that quantity wasn't quality. I gave her a week to revise her work and she turned in a C+ paper. When she graduated high school she told me that I was the only class she hadn't gotten an A in, but that the B she finally earned for the year with me in middle school was her proudest grade because it meant something. </p>
<p>It takes a lot of stamina to continuously turn back sub-standard work and to keep the quality of your assessments high. You would be surprised at how many principals will harrass a teacher if there aren't enough A's, or if a certain percent fail the class.</p>
<p>Once, I had a class where every student came in for tutoring when they needed it, attended class faithfully, and did their homework. For one semester they all got an A because they all deserved it (no test scores under 92.) The same curricullum, but an unusual group...I hope Princeton can make an exception for that kind of situation.</p>
<p>My son attends a private school that hasn't had a 4.0 in about 30 years, if then. No one who has been around a long time can remember one.</p>
<p>We routinely send kids to the national science competitions (Intel, etc.), where they win one of the top few spots and have kids who made the list of the top 50 nationwide HS students in newspapers like USA Today. But even these high achievers get an A- once or twice. There is no grade inflation and the GPAs show it.</p>
<p>Our kids tend to do well in terms of college acceptances but nearly all go to LACs. We do send kids to places like Stanford and Duke, as well as the occasional Ivy. And those schools either know us well or can evaluate us based on the school profile that is routinely sent. Having a kid who wanted a larger school and had no interest in the ivies, we did worry that he would not do as well at more numbers driven places. In the end it all worked out but parents here do worry about the GPAs.</p>
<p>This isn't about high school, but when I taught college (for many years) I routinely gave Cs. A "C" meant "met the standard," a "B" meant "above average work" and "A" meant "outstanding." I had been told all my life that that was what those grades meant - "C" was in the middle of the bell curve. At my Ivy, when I was in grad school, the grades were High Honors, Honors,and Pass. "High Honors" was supposed to reserved for truly excellent work that with a bit of editing would be publishable.</p>
<p>I read the article when it came out and thought (as did my spouse) that it was a rather self serving article that seemed to have been "placed" by Belmont Hill's PR firm, perhaps as an apology for why their admissions performance has not been up to expectations. You really need to take these articles in a broader context. There was a WSJ article a few years back, shortly after the suicide of the college advisor at Concord Academy, if I recall correctly, that discussed the gap between expectation and reality regarding elite college admissions for prep schools. The world has changed, and I suspect the student bodies have changed, too.</p>
<p>Remember that a generation ago, new england prep schools were much more likely to have student bodies whose parents were probably legacies of both the prep school and an ivy league school. With the well known legacy bump at the ivies, I'm not at all surprised that more kids went to the ivies then, not as a result of the prep school being a feeder (which the schools claimed to be, of course), but because of parental legacy status.</p>
<p>So, a new generation comes along, sees the great historical ivy placement record, attributes it to the prep school instead of the parents, buys their way into the prep school, and is disappointed with the admissions result. (Prep school begins damage control)</p>
<p>Newmassdad, you may be right about the PR angle behind this article, but there's still this issue: at some schools, a private school kid coming from a school with relative grade deflation is going to be at a disadvantage when competing against the slew of public school kids with straight A's. I think the Ivies and selective northeastern LAC's are all well aware of Belmont Hill's profile, and take that into account when making decisions. But a big state school such as UMich may not take the time.</p>
<p>Actually, a big state school like Mich or Berkeley can and will take the time (the UC's have comprehensive review) to take a school profile into account, but what they can't do is ingore thier published admissions criteria. Thus, the 'average' Belmont kid (who maybe capable of being a val at 90% of the nation's HS's), will not get into any UC bcos his/her 'average' grade of a B minus is below the minimum required gpa for admission to the system.</p>
<p>And that's precisely the problem: No matter what the school profile says, or the number of AP credits, SAT scores, a B- will be interpreted by state Us as a B-; at private, selective colleges, the school profile will be taken into account, as will other elements of the application.</p>
<p>Belmont Hill may be doing damage control. But it does not explain the discrepancy between reported median SAT scores of 1360 and the B- average grades. Let's remember the shock experienced by Gianscolere last year upon transferring into Milton Academy from a Chicago public school where he'd been a straight A student. Being told that Bs (which he received after working harder than he ever did) were good grades did little to comfort him when assessing his chances of getting into good colleges.</p>
<p>Marite, thank you for introducing the article. </p>
<p>I don't think that the Belmont Hill school should need to do a lot of PR. On the contrary, the PR should be reserved to the schools that have created the abomination of rampant grade inflation. In our neck of the woods, the difference between the grading policies at private and parochial schools on one hand, and the large public schools is ridiculous. </p>
<p>What if Belmont High did spot all its students 1 to 2 full grades by labeling its entire curriculum with a term like "AB" -to merge AP and IB? Inasmuch as the procedure would receive much outcry, it would be no different from common practices at schools that have succumbed to peer pressure.</p>
<p>In a perfect world, the college admission's staff should be able to assess the differences. Does anyone really believe that this happens and that many school really scrutinize the transcripts and profile to find the impact of Mr. Nevergivesabee or Mrs. Everyonegetsaplusss on reported GPA's? </p>
<p>The biggest problem is that one would expect the private and parochial schools to quickly respond to the market conditions. The sad reality is, based on my experience, they are very slow to react and fail to grasp the immense disservice to their students that their conservative policies create. As an example, my sister just received a letter from the guidance office where the principal extolling the value of being a "bright well-rounded kid" in admissions.</p>
<p>marite:</p>
<p>I'm not familiar with Gianscolere, but I can imagine. Actually, if I was a parent looking at this school, I'd think the test scores too low. Only 3 NFSM's in a class of 72? Only 124 APs, or less than 2 per kid (although, that could be that their honors program is "better than AP/IB")? I know of public's in Cal that have 10% NMSF's, and the top seniors average 6-8 APs; I would have expected that for $25k, Belmont could do much better than our poor, near-bankrupt state.</p>
<p>So what's the answer, should the school adopt inflation? If the school is a big name, say Andover or Choate, could they get away with this? Do you figure parents knew beforehand, is this in their brochure?</p>
<p>The number of AP available at a school is not much of an indicator of the quality of an HS. Obviously, a school with 72 seniors must have a hard time to have its AP classes reach the 12-15 candidates that are need to "make". The only option would be to impose selected AP on its students. </p>
<p>FWIW, my HS dropped its entire AP program and replaced it with an Early Admission program where students take classes at the local college and earn automatic credits at other schools in Texas, including UT-Austin. There are obvious drawbacks but they do not regret dumping the AP program.</p>
<p>You know, who cares? I would think, would hope, that the education at Belmont is superior to that at 90% of public schools as well - that should be what the parents are paying for, and if the grading policy puts the students at a disadvantage at a handful of elite public unis, then so what? Yes, I feel sorry for the occasional student who might want to attend a large university, but I imagine UMich would be happy to accept them in transfer from, aaahh YALE!?
If the parents sent them to this school because it was a shoe-in for Harvard, hm, that may not work out, but it sounds like the young men still have a pretty good shot at some elite schools. I would also think that in such a high powered atmosphere, the word about grading and the perverse drag it places on admittance to public univs is common knowledge by now, and plans are being made accordingly. It is sad what it says about the other schools in the country, as well as being a damage control piece for the school.</p>
<p>I don't usually find myself in disagreement with the erudite Xiggi, but the private school my kids attend provides a college counseling service that is so much better than others available in the area, words cannot describe.</p>
<p>Bluebayou:</p>
<p>It's a mistake to divide the number of APs by the number of students. In any school, there are students who will take 6-8 APs and some that do not take any. As you state, in your hs, top seniors take 6-8APs. Presumably, not ALL seniors in your hs take APs.
As for NMSF, recall that MA has the highest NM cutoff (together with MD and DC), so it is not entirely fair to compare MA and CA students on those grounds. Again, about test scores, Belmont Hill (which has a reputation for strong athletics) is about on a par with the better known prep schools. 1360 would be 700M and 660V (or some permutation thereof). I cannot see that this median SAT score is "too low." Our public hs has a graduating class of nearly 400 students, 6 NMSF and median SAT scores just reaching 900.</p>
<p>Ahhh.....maybe htis is why my son was thrown into that "enrichment" program as part of his UMich acceptance. I think his avergae GPA hovers around 3.3-3.4 (I had to calculate it myself because the school won't calc a GPA or rank students), which is great at his school, but looks like crap when you compare it to what is most often seen on CC. </p>
<p>Kirmum, I don't think they should adopt the inflation. I think they should stand firm on the grading policies. I think the schools that grade this way are known well enough by most of the selective colleges, so it doesn't matter. Trouble comes when the kids want to apply somwhere like UMich, UCs, etc. Also, there's trouble with qualifying for independent scholarships - as their GPA is probably not going to be high enough. </p>
<p>Another problem with these same schools and independent scholarships is that many of them don't rank. Thus, the kid are shut out of even more scholarships....no rank, lower GPA. Many scholarship donors don't care if your HS is #1,2,3 in the country and your SAT is 1500.....no rank, no scholarship......no 4.0, no scholarship. </p>
<p>Everything has a price. IMHO, it's well worth it.</p>