Or class rank - but I suppose they can just look up the stated latin honors policy.
On the other hand, grad schools might also look specifically at “subject” GPAs - how the student did in those courses that are relevant to the graduate studies. And, of course, they’ll have input from the evaluations/recommendations that professors and internship positions wrote, to “round off” the picture.
Remember, most “grad schools” are also universities with undergraduate colleges. They know very well how “the system works” - and how to “sift” through the smoke.
Heh, I don’t always share views with them, which is why I used my alumni ballot to vote in younger members to the board of overseers. But I digress.
I was more interested in what you found concerning, as a fellow thoughtful parent. I like weighing both sides and, to date, had not found grade inflation troubling.
Yes, I do find it concerning that it affects learning. That being said, I loved the Yale Law School model that, if I recall correctly, was at one time just pass-fail (I think it has changed a bit since then).
I am all for learning and removing pressures so students really can learn. I would love to get rid of grades and tests altogether. But that ain’t gonna happen, at least for grades.
There is just something very odd about grade inflation. And I do appreciate the insights here, which are illuminating. I had heard about the concept, but the discussions in this thread and in the ALDC thread really opened my eyes to the extent and scope of it. I just didn’t know it was this widespread and this massive.
I don’t mean to single out Harvard, and that’s not my intent at all. It’s just the data is there for that school. I wonder, as other posters have mentioned, why they don’t cut out the seeming charade and do a Pass/Fail. And I wonder why the deans seem to be so concerned, but the inflation seems to be growing. Whatever might be the basis for their concerns doesn’t appear to be translating into action. Perhaps your votes had an effect?
As others have pointed out, this is not localized to Harvard, the Ivies, the “top schools” etc. It’s also there with high schools etc.
I guess in a nutshell my concern is that the whole grading system seems questionable, and it still isn’t clear to me how this helps students.
What do elite colleges think of applicants who come from an elite boarding school with a very well known history of, if not grade Deflation, then at least absolutely no inflation?
This is my concern, as my student attends said high school and this is a bit concerning to me, although historically, students do end up placing very well in colleges.
I know they bemoan this fact on the prep school subforum, but a median of 89 is by no means lack of grade inflation. They are just not as inflated as the LPS.
Regardless, colleges are well aware of the grading standards, and as you point, applicants do quite well in admissions. For the students, if anything, there will be less culture shock when they receive a B+
Yes, I keep hearing this from prep school parents, but when a 21 year Harvard alum and interviewer commented here I hoped to hear their professional opinion
Yes, I have also wondered what grading systems are trying to achieve and how are they doing against that goal - either the old days or now.
I can tell you that at the business school at Harvard (alas, I wasn’t a “real” alum so who knows if my vote counted, haha) I thought the grading system was great. In each course, 80% of the students got a “2” and then around 10% got a “3” which was lower and around 10% got a “1” which was the higher grade. (Don’t know if that is still the system there, it has been a “few” years.) So most people did the work and learned what was supposed to be learned and people were fine with 2s. Then some on the edges did a little worse and some did a little better but it wasn’t a big deal because it was a small percentage.
I wouldn’t mind if this grade inflation thingy evolved into something like that, which seemed to reflect what was really happening in the classroom.
We don’t have any of what I would consider “elite private schools” in my territory so I can only conjecture, but I surmise students at such schools are mostly competing against each other for slots.
The student ranked 40th at Philips Exeter is competing against others at Phillips Exeter or similarly placed students at Phillips Andover, St. Paul’s, etc. If your child’s boarding school is placing students at elite colleges that opportunity will still be there, with or without inflation elsewhere. AOs know his or her school.
Grade inflation is more of an issue at public school X, with 20 kids at or about a 4.0 GPA competing against 20 kids from public school Y at or about a 4.0 GPA, neither of which is in a high school which ranks and all of whom are submitting (or not submitting) scores in a test optional year. AOs simply can’t know each public high school as intimately as they know private school feeders.
In such an environment, I’d posit that a lottery would be about as fair as “holistic admissions”, which IMO is tantamount to an admixture of diversity initiatives (which I support) coupled with a competition over who has the most money for inflated ECs, private consultants, and essay “editors” (which I don’t).
Money is everywhere in the process but high school grades within a district have always been the least sensitive to household income.
To me, that’s a rationally based system of judging and promotes learning in the real sense. For those who don’t want to learn or simply cannot master the basic proficiencies required, and for those who excel, there are separate categories. But the vast majority are going to get that 2.
That’s so much better than what appears to be a rigged 3.7 purporting to be a GPA in the normal (i.e., old-fashioned) sense, to keep all students at par with the other Ivies, get them jobs, get them into grad schools etc.
I’ve been a parent and a lawyer for enough years to know that something just ain’t quite right with this massive level of grade inflation, and my Spidey-sense is tingling all over the place! I just don’t know why.
The Latin honors policy does seem like the best method. But I hadn’t realized it’s so variable. At D’s college, summa is top 1% (requires 3.99+ and 4.0 in some departments) and magna is top 3.5%, whereas at S’s college those are top 5% (typically 3.96+) and top 10% respectively. You can be summa at S’s college with the same rank and GPA as cum laude at D’s college.
I’m now going to be even less impressed by politicians who highlight that they were magna cum laude at Harvard (top 20% at present but seemingly more before 2002).
Why do you care? To me it’s like looking at dresses at the Smithsonian and seeing that women were 4’11" tall “in the olden days” and had 19" waists.
What ain’t right and why does it matter? Just because there’s a metric attached doesn’t mean it’s “meaningful”. Do you honestly know (or care) what your bosses GPA was?
Have you ever known inflation to be good? Grade inflation means kids are getting artificially high scores they probably don’t deserve. 20 years ago, a perfect score on the SAT would make the 6:00 news. Now any kid in the top 20% of their class can do it. Now, the SAT is just being eliminated altogether.
Even worse, most of the high school students in the Baltimore inner city are reading at a grade school level. It’s a completely unethical practice that does a big disservice to kids. And it makes schools appear to be more competitive than they really are, drowning out genuine students. It’s hard to compete with cheaters when it’s the school that’s cheating.
If the top universities are practicing grade inflation where 80% of the student body is averaging graduating GPA > 3.7 (Harvard Class of 2021), then the non-grade inflating schools will have to follow suit to protect their own graduates and to help them find jobs and get them accepted into competitive grad schools.
How do graduate schools and employers decide who to pick among the sea of applicants with sky-high GPAs? If the narrative is that the graduating students MUST be qualified based on the prestige of the university that they attend, then those employment and admission decisions will be increasingly based on pedigree. The Harvard student with the 3.7 GPA must be better than the Boston College student with the identical GPA. And the BC student must be better than the U Mass student.
As a result, there will be even more emphasis for families to get their children into “elite” schools, perpetuating the endless cycle to this academic arms race.
Goodness, how you analogize that to the issue of grade inflation is remarkable. The two posters immediately above this post have enunciated some very clear issues for starters.
So, perhaps the solution is to give everyone 4.0s since, as you contend, it doesn’t matter? And, if it doesn’t matter, why play these games?
Mastery of the material? Is there such a thing? There’s no upper bound to human knowledge. If Harvard has universally highly capable students (which isn’t the case, BTW), it should raise, rather than lower, the academic bar universally for all its students.
