Hello all,
I know there are more than a few of us going crazy waiting for M10 decisions for our class of 2027 kiddos, so I thought I’d pose an interesting question to get our minds off M10 for a moment.
I’m curious if people know about grade deflation at BS? I’ve been reading on these boards that both Deerfield and Groton are notorious for grade deflation. Is this really the case? and if it is the case, how does grade deflation/inflation work? TIA!
I don’t think there is grade inflation at any of the schools discussed here. Most are straight-scale, no do-overs, you-get-what-you-get-and-you-don’t-have-a-fit. That first term report is often a shock to those who came from middle schools with more lenient grading rubrics. There are many threads in the archives here that deal with this topic. To net them all out for you and save you the research trouble, none of the grading policies at ANY of the boarding schools penalize any student in the college application process. Every college that any BS student applies to understands the rigor and grading that student is coming from, and every student finds a place at a great college table that is a fine fit for that student.
BS students are not compared to students coming from high schools with different grading policies. They are only compared against students from their same pool who are all under the same grading restrictions.
No worries.
At most schools, it’s real. At our school, the feeling was that pretty much anyone could improve, every paper could be better etc. Grades were not about effort but mastery.
With that said, student who had challenged these and were in the middle of the class all had excellent college placement (without hooks). The one place where this is more of an issue is if you are applying to big publics - especially outside your region - that admit purely on stats.
This seems to be of greatest concern to parents as their kids are going through the college process, and it seems to be less so after the process is over. So yes, it is a real source of stress but perhaps not as real a factor in the end.
It not that there’s grade deflation. It’s that there is a lack of grade inflation. And yes, it’s real.
As @ChoatieMom says, there are no mulligans, no (or very limited) extra credit.
And every single college AO is aware of the grading standards.
The biggest challenge will be for the kid to adjust their mindset (and develop time management skills). For the kid used to being a straight A student, realizing that 95% will graduate with less than a 4.0 may come as a surprise.
Another surprise - 50% will graduate in the bottom half of the class. But they still go to decent colleges.
But this is why you’re sending your child to BS–for the rigorous, stellar education s/he’ll receive there, right? When the high school education is that strong, college takes care of itself so, as @gardenstategal summed up, grade deflation is “not as real a factor in the end.”
Our one child at a HADES school will tell you absolutely there is grade deflation, but as others have said it’s typically only certain teachers. It’s frustrating because in classes like English there is so much subjectivity, so our child has asked for specific feedback versus just settling for a consistent B or B+ on every assignment. The teacher couldn’t even come up with a reason when our child asked…very telling. So if this teacher was trying to inspire our child to become a stronger writer she’s sadly done the opposite.
This.
Depends on the school. At the HADES school with which I am most familiar, most of the students graduate with an A-minus average or higher.
I would say this is because most are doing excellent work! I know @ameridad knows this, but this is not a pool of students that’s representative of the general public. They are smarter, harder working, and more motivated on average. So their work product, on average, is going to be better.
Oh yes, I agree with this. But the point is that by and large, the teachers are not regularly downgrading very good work into the B+ or lower area at this school.
There is also survivorship bias in the data. Namely, the kids who are struggling the most academically during the first year or two are less likely to stick it out and graduate than kids who are more appropriate academic fits for the school. The kids who drop out aren’t included in the published school profiles.
For one of the schools you mentioned, you can pull up the school profile.
It appears that 9% of the class has an unweighted gpa above 93 with 1% above 95(end of jr yr). That seems lower than most public and private schools in my area. However there does to be almost 50% of the class who has between 89&92.99, so there is a large group in a very narrow range.
Based on their matriculation data, about 22% attend T10ish type schools, so most likely for unhooked kids at least, half come from that 9% above 93 and the rest are likely from the next gpa tier.
In the end it is all relative to the school, as the kids are compared primarily to the pomd they are in: one just needs to know what the general competition looks like vs the education you are paying for and decide based on that. We went through the same analysis selecting our private day school vs the public magnet. It is a lot to debate, but the schools you mention are known for a fantastic education.
And students who earn As are likely to receive lots of corrective feedback on assignments, tests, etc (at least in our child’s experience).
One of the HADES recently changed their grading to remove the retakes and reworking of graded work and there was a ton of student push back. But not giving students multiple opportunities to redo work hones the accountability skill, something that many lack in today’s society as a whole. Students should understand that there are no redos for the engineers and mechanics designing and building a plane…if you don’t have the right engines or put the landing gear on, you’re going to have problems the first and only time. Students need to show up the first time. It’s ok to learn that sometimes you fail, so what do you take from that? We’ve built a society the assume that because you fail once that you quit and don’t bother trying next time. That’s not the case. Sometimes you have to miss that Boba event on campus to check in with a teacher and go over something you struggle with. These are things you learn when you don’t get to put off your work the first time or get to do it again later because you’d rather catch a movie tonight with people in your dorm. Teachable moments all around when there is no grade inflation.
Surprised school would allow redos. My daughter is at a very good private school. They would never allow that, but rather encourage growth for the next one.
Oh my too true. This is one of the main reasons we are leaving the LPS. There is virtually no accountability and ample opportunity to retake and resubmit assignments, at least at the middle school level, and only to a lesser extent at the high school level. It’s infuriating, especially when the school says that they are aiming to get kids “college and career ready” - and they will be neither if not taught that there are often no do-overs or that failure is an opportunity for growth, not a reason to quit. We feel like we’re swimming against the tide.
The highest grade you can get in my child’s honors math class is a 96%. We want to maintain rigor at BS.
I don’t see what that has to do with my post, but also, that doesn’t seem fair…if a student gets 100% of answers correct, then they deserve a 100%.
A classmate of mine is actually so smart that throughout the entire fall term in his calculus-based stats class, he got exactly one question wrong on all of his tests combined. If that doesn’t merit an A+ (he got one, by the way), then at that point, the teacher is just being mean.
My kid’s school does letter grades only, and there is no A+.
I do worry that college AOs might not read through the school profile closely enough to realize that.
They might not. But not for the reasons you think. If a university gets multiple applicants every year from that BS, they likely already know more about the school than what is covered by the profile.
No university is going to ding a school for its grading scale.
