<p>Am I the only one who is frustrated at the sheer amount of HSGPA compression because of the egregious grade inflation across the nation? It's simply ridiculous! </p>
<p>Not to mention the weighted GPA inflation. I mean, if a 4.0 means perfection, then why are there schools who have a fifth of their student body with above this magic number while their SAT is simply average? I mean, I just took a look at a nearby public university's incoming freshmen profile, and despite their average SAT being around a 1800, their freshman incoming GPA is about a 4.4, where it was about a 4.0 a few years ago, and their SAT did not change at all.</p>
<p>I know that this may be due to more hard-working students, but why are so many As, the superior grade, being given out? It's just crazy.</p>
<p>4.0 is an arbitrary number. If it’s not the highest possible GPA it’s not considered perfect. Weighted GPA just uses another scale in which a 4.0 isn’t perfect anymore. I think weighted GPA is pointless for almost all purposes, though. </p>
<p>“I know that this may be due to more hard-working students, but why are so many As, the superior grade, being given out?”</p>
<ol>
<li>Teachers have become accustomed to lower-quality work and truly believe that the below C-level work they’re receiving deserves an A. </li>
<li>Teachers want to make themselves look better.</li>
<li>Teachers have a very specific standard set out for an assignment and award As to any work that meets that standard. </li>
<li>The work is easier and people are doing it very well.</li>
<li>A lot of students actually are hardworking. </li>
<li>Students take easy classes to boost their GPA.</li>
<li>High schools know that colleges are really competitive and they want students to be successful at getting into college.</li>
<li>Parents in desperate need of a life are often inclined to call the school and complain when their kid gets a bad grade.</li>
<li>No study is perfect. I agree that there’s grade inflation, but we don’t know what the average GPA actually is.</li>
</ol>
<p>Grade inflation is simply frustrating. It puts more and more pressure for a perfect 4.0, even though several of these 4.0s and above are meaningless.</p>
<p>Weighted is just a way of making people’s grades look better than they are, a way of inflating grades that were already inflated to hell and back.
Weighted = 5.0 scale, but people still have the idea that a 4.0 is perfect. </p>
<p>This is why standardized test scores are so important to colleges. Even if there were no grade inflation, some high schools would be somewhat easier than others.</p>
<p>What is getting an A really supposed to indicate, though? You can do well on a test through cramming and still have to take a remedial course because you don’t remember anything.</p>
<p>I really don’t think it matters. Colleges look at the PSAT/SAT scores, not some arbitrary GPA.</p>
<p>For me, my gpa isn’t the most attractive score out of my school (ranked 9th, not a 4.0 perfect A student), yet I am one of the few students getting mail for ivy league schools. Why? Because my psat rocks.</p>
<p>That’s adorable. I remember when I was a naive junior who thought college mail meant anything other than the fact that they want your application fee.</p>
<p>Anyways, grade inflation is bad at my school. Mostly in AP classes though like calc and physics where “smart kids” who are bad at math/science whine because they need that A in the rigorous class to look good for colleges even though they don’t even like the class and demand that their C that they deserve gets bumped up to an A because they tried their hardest. Because of this teachers give “homework grades” and other free points to inflate averages. However in regular classes it’s pretty much whatever you get you get.</p>
<p>Do kids actually demand the teachers to give them As? And here I thought that the kids begging for As at my school were bad…</p>
<p>But yeah, this is why more and more schools are giving a greater emphasis towards the SAT, even though I disagree with it as while the SAT accounts for aptitude, it does not accounts for accomplishments.</p>
<p>Average GPA at my high school is around a 89/100 (we don’t use a 4.0 scale) and the average SAT score is around a 2100. Somewhat frustrating for me when I see people on CC who somehow manage to get 4.0 GPA but get not so great test scores, makes me wonder just how rigorous their classes were.</p>
<p>Grade inflation is pretty bad at my school. Apparently we don’t do Class rank because there are too many 4.0s. My AP Chemistry teacher bumped my 88.9 to an 89.5 for me to have an A. It was extremely nice and I didn’t ask her to do it (well I jokingly did) but she did because firstly, she always talks about how her students earn the highest grades (in class and on AP) and how she intends to keep in that way. She also did because I had a 92 all quarter until one test knocked me down. But another kid in my class begged for her to bump an 87.</p>
<p>They don’t actually demand As but when they realize their “test average” is a C and that they should be getting a C they give the teacher cold looks and I sometimes hear conversations such as “how dare mr. or ms. ____ even think of giving me a C? I have never gotten below a 98 in my life because I can memorize a textbook for 15 hours the day before a test and I’m perfect. Just because I’m not good at physics doesn’t give them the right to give me a C!” </p>
<p>Okay so I exaggerated a bit but stuff like this does happen a lot. And it’s not all the kids, not even most of them, but some. Enough to make it annoying. These are the kids who will get a serious wake up call when they get to college and realize teachers aren’t going to make homework and participation 30% of their grade and give them a 100 on it. </p>
<p>I sometimes felt pretty bad for the teacher when situations like this happened because the kids care more about the grade they’re getting than the actual class material and if they spent all the time they do complaining about their grade studying for the tests then they would probably have an A.</p>
<p>“Colleges look at the PSAT/SAT scores, not some arbitrary GPA.”</p>
<p>All the stuff I’ve ever read said grades matter quite a lot, but they usually recalculate your GPA according to their own standards so they can compare people from schools with different scales. Your GPA and test scores have to both be high.</p>
<p>I hate grade inflation. Shouldn’t “good” students who are incapable of doing the work in a course (say, because they’re “bad” at the subject) get a C or a D instead of an A, despite the fact that they’re working hard?</p>
<p>Lol
But really, weighted grades are worthless. 88/217 in my graduating class had WEIGHTED 4.0+s, yet pranced as if it were uw and they were just that smart.
Even weighted grades were kinda deflated, though. 97+ to get a 4.5 for honors and 5.5 for AP. :o</p>
<p>My school’s GPA system is much worse… We don’t have weighted GPAs and because our school is regulated by a diocese we must follow the way that every other diocesan high school (Catholic) does their GPA. Basically 90+ equates to a 4.0, which is totally ridiculous because I think there are people ranked in the 80s (or even 90s) out of 275 who have a 4.0 or close to it with a 3.9 or 3.8 (unweighted!). We are the top school in our diocese, so while we have so many 4.0s, while some other schools in our system have under 10. To give a more standardized example, our school’s valedictorian had a 2370 SAT score and she only took the test once; meanwhile, its rare for some of the schools to have someone break 2000. </p>
<p>In the end, I decided to calculate my UW GPA based on the method that my friend’s rigorous private uses. I would have a 3.92, whereas other students in my grade with “4.0s” would have a 3.4 . . . it makes no sense. </p>
<p>I think a lot of the problems with GPA and grade inflation have to do with the fact that factors differ so much from school to school. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to compare everyone on an even spectrum. Thankfully, to some extent colleges realize this, but it is still unfair.</p>
<p>At my school we are on a 4.0 scale but we have no AP courses. We have classes just as hard or even harder than AP classes and get the same grading scale as someone who would take integrated mathematics vs Calc. We have to have a 93 percent or higher to receive an A. I feel like the smarter kids are being set at a disadvantage because we have kids with extremely high GPAs who just took cake classes. My school is so small I basically ran out of classes to take so I take College courses at a local community college. These classes don’t count on my gpa as weighted at all either. So basically I feel like I’m taking classes at the level of AP but not getting the weighted gpa to help with scholarships and such.</p>