GPA and Grading Standards

Colleges and Universities A-Z Middlebury College
1

<p>Pardon my ignorance - I'm just a parent - but what's the deal with so many kids on this forum reporting GPAs above 4.0?</p>

<p>When I was in high school years ago, "4.0" was the maximum, and very few students achieved that. A "3.5" would have been considered very good. That's still the way it is at my kid's rather competitive private high school, where a 3.5 probably would put you in the top 10%. </p>

<p>So what am I observing? Is it grade inflation? Is it simply a new method of calculating GPAs at public schools? Are posters exaggerating their stats? Or is competition just so much higher, and the quality of public school students is that much better than ever?</p>

<p>I'm skeptical that it could be the latter. Students at my kid's private school tend to do 2 or 3 hours of homework per night, write 1 or 2 10-page papers per course per term, and cover a 500-page Russian novel in Lit class in about 2 weeks. A friend at the local public high school, who is a straight-A student, reports that he does maybe 30 minutes to an hour of homework per night. Paper assignments are much shorter and less frequent. The public school Math curriculum sounds like it is much more accelerated, with good students taking Calculus as early as sophomore year. Yet, they seem to achieve much lower SAT Math scores than students in my kid's private school, where even the best students can't take Calculus until Senior year, after they've done a lot of foundation work involving proofs, number theory, abstract Geometry, etc.</p>

<p>So I'd be interested to hear what a student typically has to do to earn, say, a "4.3" GPA, and how common it is for students to get grades in that range.</p>

<p>I'm going to leave this in the "Middlebury" thread (though it arguably belongs elsewhere) in hopes of hearing back from a "controlled" population.</p>

2

<p>4.0 is a 95%, so if a student has, let's say, a 97% average on their transcript, that correlates to higher than a 4.0. Some schools, like mine, put a weight on AP and Honors classes for fairness, because a 4.0 to someone who works their ass off taking 5 APs and a 4.0 to someone who does the bare minimum but takes "automatic A" classes wouldn't be fair. When colleges get transcripts at my school (which weights AP/Honors classes), there's a note on the bottom about the weighting, and it is mentioned in the school report too, so I don't think it's an unfair advantage.</p>

<p>They also know that private schools have harder workloads than some public schools, so if your kid has a 3.7 and someone from a lesser-ranked public school has a 4.0, that's basically the same thing.</p>

3

<p>I would interject that a 4.0 is not necessarily equivalent to a 95%. Our school district policy is that a 3.5 gpa is for percentages between 91 and 95% (an "A-"); a 4.0 is given for students who have an average percentage for a class ranging between 96% and 100% (an "A").</p>

<p>My daughter has taken as difficult a course load as possible in our district (even taking a "dual enrollment" class at the college in our town when she was in 8th grade as well as several other classes at the local college during high school as well as all offered AP classes and tons of "accelerated" classes). In many of her classes she has received a 100% or higher and her gpa is still only a 4.0.</p>

<p>I serve on the district's "dual enrollment" committee. At one meeting I suggested that our district consider weighting classes for students who "work their butts off" and are still given only a 4.0 and other students taking much easier classes receive a 4.0 as well. Our principal is philosophically opposed to weighting grades b/c in his opinion the kids taking less difficult classes are likely working just as hard for their grades.</p>

<p>So, to answer tk21769, when students have a gpa higher than 4.0 it is often because their school district gives classes considered to be more difficult (often AP and dual enrollment) a higher value than the rest of the classes offered by that high school.</p>

4

<p>I am with the original poster. I've said it a lot on CC, but my kids' school has had only four 4.0 students in the last 26 years. The average GPA is 3.35 and, in a class of 125, 22 are usually somewhere on the National Merit scale and 44 somewhere on the AP Scholar scale (arguably those numbers probably overlap). There is no weighting and there is no rank.</p>

<p>With private LAC like Midd, transcripts are looked at to see what classes are being taken (so if you're getting A's in basketweaving vs. AP, they see it right away). And hopefully most schools send some sort of profile of their school to explain their process. If your school does not weight it is not quite fair to rank. An A in Calc is NOT the same rigor as an A in AP Calc. Both are challenging, but while the kid in calc who gets an A deserves an A, it is not the same as the A in AP Calc. They might be working equally hard, but one IS harder.</p>

<p>Personally, I don't advocate for weighted grades because I think that it just adds to the divisiveness in HS -- "I am so much better than you because I have a 6.5 gpa (or however high these things go)." However, I do wonder if so many kids are getting A's which is for exceptional work beyond the course requirements whether or not we're truly challenging the masses.</p>

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<p>tk21769:</p>

<p>GPAs are malleable. Each school district in California can make up its own rule regarding how they calculate, weigh and report GPA and corresponding class rank.</p>

<p>Take the case of two contiguous school district, each with high performing public schools. In one, every Honors semester course grade is A= 4.5, B= 3.5, C = 2.5 and so on. For each AP semester course, the grade A = 5.0, B= 4.0, C= 3.0 and so on. The neighboring school is far more grudging and flat. Every CP, Honors and AP course has A = 4.0, B= 3.0, C = 2.0. They make one minor adjustment they make is they add on a 0.01 to every Honors semester GPA, so an Honors A = 4.01 (not 4.5 like in School 1) and for AP they add 0.02, so an AP A = 4.02 (not 5.0 like School 1). Big difference between the two schools already.</p>

<p>Now, take two straight A students from these two schools. Say each has ten semester courses in junior year. Schools 1 kid reports junior GPA as 5.0 (assuming all AP classes) while kid from School 2 reports GPA as 4.2 (4.0 average GPA + 0.02 added GPA (times) 10 AP semester courses). BIG DIFFERENCE in reported GPA based on comparable performance between 2 students taking all AP classes in two neighboring school districts.</p>

<p>AP classes are easy to understand, because ultimately there is a public AP exam which gives Colleges an ability to assess scores. But these are self-reported and we are left with the school transcript. And while in the above example, comparison may be easy , that is not always the case.</p>

<p>Let's go back to School 1. Student at school 1 takes all school-designated Honors classes (which are not the same as the higher level AP classes) -- gets all As and ends up with a 4.5 average GPA. Very inpressive. Student at school 2 takes 6 AP semester classes and 4 Honors classes, gets As in all and ends up with an average of 4.16. Student at School 2 took demonstrably "harder" classes and ends up with a 4.16 vs the School 1 student with a 4.5 GPA. Both students are utterly honest in reporting their GPA but they are truly apples and oranges.</p>

<p>IMPLICATIONS? Admissions Officers have their work cut out trying to determine how to evaluate transcripts from different schools/districts each with their own "weighting system" or lack thereof. Even though they have plenty of practice, it is hard not to be seduced by a student from School 1 in a straight choice with a student from School 2, all other things being equal.</p>

<p>That is why it is so difficult to interpret the mid-50 percent GPA range. Is that some standardized GPA (normalized by say Middlebury or Harvard) or is it simply the mathematical average of all the apples, peaches and tangerines reported by students' schools.</p>

<p>Food for thought.......</p>

<p>Edit: I'm unsure if this subject doesn't belong in some other Forum, and not here...</p>

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<p>I think a lot of this question has to do with the grading system the school uses--how they convert your GPA from the out-of-100 scale into the 4.0-scale seems to be a big mystery. I mean, I'm taking the most rigorous course load in my high school--which, while extremely difficult to balance, does not look as impressive as the students from other schools who take 10 APs and such (rigor varying from school to school is a whole other topic :) )--and I had a 98.1/100 GPA (UW) when it was last calculated (it's probably down a couple of points by now, senior year has been the hardest yet). My guidance counselor says that that translates into roughly a 4.3 UW, and ~4.7ish weighted, but I have no idea how you get from 98 to 4.3. </p>

<p>As to the OP's query about public schools--well, obviously I'm biased, since I go to a public school, but here's my take on it: I'm in three AP classes this year (my school's AP offerings, though the classes themselves are great, are in short supply), and I probably work on homework for 4 hours a night and at least that amount of time on the weekends. So, achieving my 4.3 or whatever is not easy at all, which is probably why I'm valedictorian of my class (last time I checked...): there are only a few other people in my graduating class who have that kind of average. Maybe my school IS public, but it's also difficult (people do extremely well on AP exams--to follow the AP Calc example, about 70% of the Calc class every year gets a 5, and very few people fail it). </p>

<p>If, however, I went to private school, I'd like to flatter myself that I'd be able to keep up a similar difficultly level in classes...but I'm also sure that my grades probably wouldn't be quite so high, if only because the frames of reference people have regarding GPAs are different, as you were describing above: perhaps more of a collegiate system than a high school everything-out-of-100 mentality. That most certainly does not mean, though, that public school students are cruising through doing comparatively little work for exorbitantly high grades. I sweat for every one of those points. </p>

<p>Looking at the issue in the context of college admissions, though--does it really matter? As a student at a public high school that is largely unknown to admissions officers (so few people apply to ultra-selective schools, like Midd), I'm assuming that my GPA will work in my favor, since it's a testament to how hard I've worked in my public school setting (especially when corroborated with my SAT and AP scores). Whereas, though a student at a tough private school might not have the kind of GPA I do, colleges will recognize the GPA he/she does have in the context of their private school experience. So I've got the pure numbers, Private School Student X has the awe factor that they achieved their (lower) GPA at a private school. </p>

<p>This is just my perspective--I know of other public schools in my area where supposedly an A in something there is roughly equivalent to a C at my school. And plus, I'm biased because I'd rather not think that I'm not getting held up to rigorous standards or that I'm the lesser student because I don't attend private school. </p>

<p>Oh, and one other thing (wow, sorry this is so long!): just remember--CC is CC, and the people on here seem to generally be representative of a small minority of extremely motivated students--just because you see tons of CCers with over 4.0 GPAs doesn't make it a common occurrence in public school! :)</p>

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<p>Don't you think this is why colleges must rely on SAT and ACT scores more than they like to admit? There are too many factors that go into GPA, so scores are the only common way to evaluate kids. Of course, to get into most of these schools, you need almost straight A's at whatever school you attend as well as high scores and incredible ECs. I am amazed by the resumes of kids these days.</p>

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<p>Yes. Standardized tests, and the SAT in particular, have their critics. Their significance sometimes is downplayed by colleges. However, they remain the only objective, uniform measurement of college applicants' ability and achievement. So, I think a selective college would be remiss not to use them at all, unless it has come up with a demonstrably better set of tools to help interpret grades.</p>

<p>Test scores also are an important factor in college ranking systems. If you create a list of colleges ranked solely by median M+V SAT scores, you probably won't be surprised by the schools at the top of the list or the order in which they appear. Only a few "self-selecting" schools (such as St. John's, Reed, and perhaps the University of Chicago) have very high average scores that do not correlate closely with equally high selectivity numbers. </p>

<p>On the other hand, I doubt there are any US colleges at all that base admissions decisions solely on these scores. National or provincial entrance examination scores do play a much bigger role in some other countries, such as Japan, China, and Germany. I think many people in those countries would find it very strange that a school might consider extracurricular activities, ethnicity, or "legacy" status in the decision.</p>

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<p>I would agree that standardized tests are often used to confirm a GPA, but more and more schools are going SAT/ACT optional (and some are pretty darn selective). Plus.. some kids just aren't bubble fillers.</p>

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<p>It doesn't matter what a high school says is a student's GPA; colleges recalculate the GPA according to their own criteria.</p>

<p>Reed, for one, has published its acceptance criteria; the category "Grades, class rank, and standardized tests" comprises only 20% of the composite score. SAT or ACT is required.</p>

<p>Reed</a> Magazine: Many Apply. Few are Chosen. (5/5)</p>