<p>Originaloog, I totally agree with you that GPA is only one piece of the college admissions puzzle and am also highly skeptical of any attempt to standardize gpa. At the same time, I have to admit that I am constantly frustrated by the "fudge factor". Academic awards and the value of GPA as a predictor of college performance aside, the main point seems to me how adcoms have to deal with so many variables as they attempt to level everything out. Case in point, my S, a high school junior, made a comment just the other day that according to my D's course load, reading requirements, and even test grading, she was having "a completely different 9th grade" than he had - at the same school, in a class with the same course description and level but with different teachers. We have a high teacher turn-over and I am discovering that inconsistency in terms of both curricula and grade scale rule - so that in just too many ways grades, and even teacher comments, are subjective. At present, I tend to think in a rather conventional vein that grades taken along with the range of SAT scores continues to be a good route to take.</p>
<p>So, my interest was piqued by the suggestion that, according to the article, some U.S. colleges are looking to the Canadian model as a means to deal with, and even eliminate, the fudge factor.</p>
<p>"Good models, Guskey said, can be found in Canada, where each province requires every teacher to use the same criteria based on the same curricula.</p>
<p>At Jasper Place High School in Edmonton, Alberta -- and in every other high school in the province -- students are evaluated by one standard. Each report card has a grade for academic achievement (sometimes as a letter grade, sometimes a percentage) and shows how a student is faring against province academic benchmarks. There are also grades for areas such as homework, class participation and attendance.</p>
<p>That way, Guskey said, colleges can tell whether someone got an A because they are naturally gifted or worked hard for it.</p>
<p>"Our grades are based on whether students met the requirements of the curriculum, so we have removed that fudge factor," said Norman Mathew, assistant principal at Jasper Place High. "It's probably fairer to the student. It gives a more accurate representation of what they really know."</p>
<p>At the University of Missouri at Columbia, admissions officers take all the GPAs from the approximately 11,000 applications they receive each year and recalculate them to compute a "core GPA," said Chuck May, associate director of admissions.</p>
<p>The university does not give extra credit to honors or Advanced Placement classes, which can be an advantage because they are considered tougher courses, leading to a "weighted" grade-point average.</p>
<p>Missouri, with its mission to serve the state, wants none of that, May said. The reason is that many rural high schools don't offer AP courses and, he said, "we want to make sure we are giving equal treatment to students who don't have the same advantages as students in urban areas."</p>
<p>Plenty of universities do the same as Missouri, May said. But often it is the most selective colleges that attract applicants with multiple AP scores that make the headlines.</p>
<p>Still, Martinez said he believes the Canadian grading system could work well in the United States. And he said he'll continue traveling to at least 100 schools a year to learn about their programs."</p>
<p>"We're trying to figure out a way to level this all out to make a level playing field," Martinez said. "I'm not sure there is a perfect way to do this."</p>