<p>I just drive- good and profound point. If you don’t like the way Google interviews- well guess what? Don’t apply to Google. Get a job somewhere else. If you think that Harvard or Hopkins or Haverford are duplicitous in the way they calculate GPA you are free to apply somewhere where you “approve” of the admissions criteria.</p>
<p>My daughter committed to her school last night. They practice holistic admissions. We’ve looked at a bunch of schools and considered all the usual stuff. But in the end what sold her was meeting other admitted students, being impressed by them, and feeling that these are people she wants to go to school with. I very much doubt she asked anyone their GPA or SAT scores.</p>
<p>“OK, in the essence, nobody knows how GPA is calculated. It is not a public information. Everyone trusts adcoms. Adcoms makes their own selections, based on whatever criteria, and this criteria is holistically confidential.”</p>
<p>I would say that yes, this is true. In the US, if you want to be in any particular club (or college) then it is the college that does their picking based on whatever criteria that they want to. I think that the only exception is community college.</p>
<p>You should get this book below, A if for Admission. The author at that time revealled parts of the formula that Dartmouth was using to calculate an Academic Index plus applying scores to ECs etc. Again, the school may not rank the kids by AI and take only the top ones, but I think it gives you an idea of how one school did it at one point in time.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Admission-Insiders-Getting-League-Colleges-ebook/dp/B0048EKF22/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398886785&sr=8-1&keywords=a+is+for+admission”>http://www.amazon.com/Admission-Insiders-Getting-League-Colleges-ebook/dp/B0048EKF22/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398886785&sr=8-1&keywords=a+is+for+admission</a> </p>
<p>Californiaa, the reason colleges don’t spend the effort on calculating / standardizing GPA to the extent that they wish you would is that, unlike you, they don’t necessarily believe the person who gets the 3.9 is “better” or “more deserving” or “more qualified” than the person who gets the 3.85. They look, instead, as to whether someone has the core smarts to handle the curriculum. </p>
<p>"And another thread discusses, why there are so many international Profs in academia. Because American students, who just "who just studies, studies, studies. " are not valued. "</p>
<p>Oh well. Going into academia isn’t any more or less important or worthy than going into business or government or law or non-profit work or whatever one might want to do. </p>
<p>It’s really no shame that there are a lot of international profs in academia (as long as they can speak English well enough to teach). See, here in the US, we believe people should follow the career paths they want to follow. If smart Americans don’t want to go into academia, but want to go into business instead - so let them. What’s the big deal? </p>
<p>" Colleges already know which schools have grade inflation or deflation."</p>
<p>How do they know?</p>
<p>by comparing the students standardized tests- AP’s, SAT’s and Subject test scores to the students GPAs’.</p>
<p>If top students from school “A” have low AP or SAT scores, yet have transcripts filled with A’s for those same subjects, then it is obvious that those students grades are inflated and the school is not rigorous.
If top students from school “B” have high AP and SAT scores, and lower GPA’s , and classes are taught more rigorously and A’s are not easy to earn =grade deflation. </p>