<p>Patuxent posted the following in the Parents Forum in a thread on grade inflation. UW applicants and acceptees will find it quite interesting!</p>
<p>"The article below should be of interest to anyone applying to college and especially anyone applying to the University of Washington. College admissions officers know a lot more about what your schools grading policies than you probably realize. They also know that all A's are not created equally."</p>
<p>Patuxent, I hope you don't mind my posting this over here. I thought these folks might not catch it over at the Parents Forum, and i know they'll be interested.</p>
<p>I am not sure why the link isn't working here as I just used copy and paste to get it here. At any rate, if you can't get it to work, see the 3rd post on page 3 of the grade inflation thread at the parents forum. Poster = Patuxent</p>
<p>I think that it is a great idea. Don't know how well it works for kids who come from schools off the radar screen, however. Many of the private colleges do the same thing, some in a more holistic or intuitive fashion, but it is not something you can count upon. I hear many kids from the tougher schools counting too much on it. The problem is if you are a student that is desired for any reason from a school with inflated gpas, they will not scrutinize so closely. And in the heat of the admissions process when the adcoms are dealing with so many apps, the analyses are not always so careful. In my experience, eyeballing the kids who tend to get in, grade inflation seems to work more times than not, for the benefit of the kid with the inflated grades. It is pretty danged tough for a kid with a 2.4 to get in anywhere even if he comes from a rigorous school. I know this because I have had to try to find something for such kids. That 3.4 from that inflated average school with similar other attributes is much more likely to get into a program, and may even get merit money if the SAT score is high enough or he has some other special talent! That 2.4 has a problem. I am working with a number of kids exactly in this situation.</p>
<p>I don't think UW adjusts grades until you go to comprehensive review. But I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure UW takes your grades as they are, and then if you don't make auto admit, you get comprehensive review which takes into account the difficulty of your school.</p>
<p>Dopke, that makes more sense to me, considering the volume of apps they get. I know that Penn State which is a similar school is pretty automatic in how they review the grades, unless you are a tagged applicant or are applying to specific programs where they have committee eyeballing the apps, and then when the grades are an issue, a more careful review is done. This also occurs for kids up for merit awards in many colleges.</p>
<p>Sounds like you work in the schools. In any case, I am a parent. Some time ago I obtained a list of all the schools in the state and their rankings by the UW. The basic idea is sound, but as you indicated the idea is not fool proof. The results from some schools may be skewed by the fact the best students from a particular school may end up not going to the UW. Those who do therefore may have a lower freshman GPA at the UW than otherwise would be indicated if the best students were included in the mix. Nevertheless, I like how the UW tracks the performance of students from the different schools. However, parents school officials and students, all need to have this information well in advance of graduating from high school.</p>
<p>I am not sure that analysis holds up. The issue is how much of a difference there is between the average HS GPA of kids attending and their average UW GPA. So removing the upper tier doesn't matter that much. In fact it may make it more accurate if the kids in the sample are clustered toward the middle with fewer kids at either extreme. But I am not a statistician! Also they do have a pretty good sized sample. </p>
<p>Dobke, I think they may adjust the GPA before they do the A1. I have no proof other than what the GC told us - that they will up his GPA to get the A1. </p>
<p>MMB, did you get the private message I sent you?</p>