<p>I myself have gotten LOTS of C's in college.. and I know i understood more than a "C's" worth of information, but I don't care.. When I study, i study to understand.. i teach myself ways to remember, i can explain the stuff to people, i understand the concepts, the applications.. I'm GREAT at essay tests.. because I know the information and can tell anyone about it. i am horrible at multiple guess tests, or fill in the blanks.. I don't feel these tests really test anything important.. they test your ability to choose the right answer. when i study i dont sit and memorize word for word definitions to be able to choose the correct one out of 4... i study so that i know what the word means in my own terms.. not the way the book worded it in it's technical language. my roommates, on the othe rhand, love multiple choice tests, they say they are easier because the correct answer is always there, and they don't have to write a book to explain it. to each their own i suppose. but in the "real world" people don't come to you and say, "why is the sky blue? is it because of the way colors are reflected, or the way god painted it, or the way we precieve it to be, etc.. they would want you to explain to them why the sky is blue. simply choosing the right answer doesn't acknowledge that you KNOW why it's blue - just that you are able to choose the correct answer out of a few choices.</p>
<p>I feel that essay tests are there to test what you KNOW - and multiple choice tests are there to test what you don't.</p>
<p>bluealien01- grade inflation is when a teacher gives someone a higher grade than he or she deserves. an A should reflect mastery of the subject, so if a student gets an A in an AP class but gets a 2 on the AP exam, the A is not well-deserved. </p>
<p>there are many who score a 5 on the exam but get only a B in the class even though they worked really hard to get that grade. that would be grade deflation in my opinion.</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>I find the NMFinalist numbers at some of the schools mentioned staggering. The largest suburban (read wealthy) school district around here has a senior class over 450 and maybe 3-5 finalists year. D's very rural school has had zero finalists in their history and the school is older than the program itself. This year we have our first finalist and next year we will have our second. There will be 2-3 kids with 4.0 uw gpa's at graduation out of 140 . D will have to content herself with being one of 2 commended students (if historical numbers stay true) next year. I believe that a student from such a school who has a high gpa and also has aberrantly high SAT scores stands a reasonable chance of making a more favorable impression than a student would with similar test scores from a superior school. JMO.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon, I would tend to agree. I wonder how these kids would fare?</p>
<p>Just for comparison the district my first two attended: graduating class of about 750 (starts with 1,200 freshmen), one semi or finalist per year, and about three commended. Small rural my last two will attend: 80 graduates starting with 75 freshmen (they pick them up) and 3-4 finalists, not sure on the commended.</p>
<p>The larger school has 21 APs, the smaller has 8. Neither has honors classes. Both have about the same income level average.</p>
<p>Texastaximom, that is impressive. Out of 80 kids. Wow. 1 of every 40 kids. I looked up optimizerdad's State of Illinois and the whole state had 726 semi's(and up) in 2004. Their school had 51. Isn't that @7% of the entire State of Illinois? That's got to be a record of some kind. And one in 4 students a semi or better? That is outrageous.</p>
<p>P.S. Optimizerdad, Math is not my strong suit but if 51 of 199 students scored higher than 214 (or 216, depending on which year you are counting on the PSAT), then the 198 PSAT average means that a substantial number of the kids scored markedly lower than 198. Based on the %'s given on A's and B's (44 and 40?), how do you feel the letter grades track with PSAT performance, or is there no correlation?</p>
<p>Sorry. 45 and 44%, A's and B's.. And as to the idea that there are other schools out there with similar stats-not that I have heard about. Not 1 in 4 National Merit Semi's or better. I am still shell-shocked.</p>
<p>I can't comment on the grades, as I didn't go to this school, but the magnet school for Northern Virginia brought in 189 commended, 170 semi finalists, 160 finalists and 29 (or 28, i have conflicting information here) scholarships in 2003, out of ~400 per graduating class. The average SAT at this school is 1479.</p>
<p>~1/3 of each graduating class goes to UVA.
~1/3 goes to a "better" school
~1/3 goes to a "worse" school (ex: about 30 strong per year at W&M)</p>
<p>As for my HS, there were a lot of kids who took easy classes who got higher grades than some of the kids in the advanced class, since the weight was only .5 for SOME of the IB classes, no weight for the honors/preIB. A's were harder to come by in some classes than others, but generally, it was fairly tough (1 A of ~55 in IB English HL 1st quarter). I don't know if it affected anyone in terms of college admissions though. There were ~10 kids I think at graduation who they announced with a 4.0+, highest GPA for all A's was 4.17, 2nd highest also for all A's, was 4.14. Average SAT at my HS is ~1090, with ~40 (my guess) with 1300+. I think we had 2 semi finalsts, and maybe a finalist? Not bad considering TJ takes all the highest scoring kids, heh. Highlights of the graduating class include 13 to UVA, 9 to WM, 3 to academies, 1 Duke, 1 Hopkins, 1 GW 7 year med program, 2 Ivies.</p>
<p>There may be regional differences in grading. Here in western WA, there is absolutely rampant grade inflation. I've taught both chem and physics, and my biggest problem as a teacher was the students who told me "I've never gotten a B before," usually while they were crying. These were not students who were on the edge; they had averages in the mid-80s! After the kids failed to sway me, I'd get visits from their parents. (In one case, a parent came to me just before her daughter's graduation: "your class was my daughter's only B in all of high school, can't you change the grade?" Two years after the course!)</p>
<p>I was not a vicious grader. I scaled all tests to the second highest number of points (meaning that the highest scorer would get more than 100 points); labs were graded according to a rubric passed out with the assignment; homework was graded on completion (i.e., full points if completed and turned in on time, even with errors). About 20% of the students earned As for the year. </p>
<p>I am amused by the UWash high school GPA/college GPA chart. It gets posted every year in schools throughout Washington; what it doesn't make clear is that UWash itself has rampant grade inflation (as do many state colleges, as far as I can tell).</p>
<p>C used to be a respectable grade; those days are long past.</p>
<p>Aren't there a couple of things going on? In the case of the Illinois and Virginia magnet schools, they are first off skimming the cream of a bright population. Then, I wonder if there isn't an earlier emphasis on SAT's and PSAT's. I'm not saying the school teaches to the test - I'm thinking more subtle effects, like all the kids are talking about the test, so more kids think "Maybe I'll study a little for it". Based on my own child's experience, a little prep could have made a big difference - having the test "mean" something in the school culture would have made a bigger difference.
At her school, sophs take the PSAT and the PLAN, but the big emphasis is on it doesn't mean anything. I think the school wants to avoid a bunch of panicked parents.
I would gues that the Texas schools Curmudgeon mentions don't put any emphasis on PSATs either (they are worrying about graduation exams), and of course the kids, Curmudg's daughter excepted, have more important concerns.</p>
<p>Oh and my husband teaches high school physics, too, in a public school, grade inflation is rampant here too. Also, expectations, both student and parental, are totally divorced from reality. The grade fairy is alive and well, although she doesn't visit my husband's class - he does a lot of the same things you listed, just to get them to pass! The kids come unprepared (poor algebra skills mostly), and don't understand why they don't get it. He hates magnet schools.</p>
<p>Cur: the larger school has only one finalist per year out of the 700 some odd that remain for all for years. I'm not sure if I made that clear. In other words for that size school, and considering there is only one public high school in the city so they get just about everybody...not very good stat. The smaller, rural has a higher percentage. There is also a parochial school that is about the same size as the smaller school, and they have very simliar stats for merit finalists as the rural school. </p>
<p>Cangel: I agree. Magnets are a different story. Texas has TAMS, which is similar to IL Math and Science Academy and NoVa's Science and Tech magnet. They have a much higher concentration of merit finalists because you needed higher scores to be considered for admission. Where we used to live in Rockford there is the Auburn Academy situated within Auburn High School. I think I remember seeing at one point that the schools average ACT was 20, but this year they had 5 make the semi final cut and 11 more make the commended...all from the Academy. The mean scores include all students.</p>
<p>I remember sitting at the Duke Tip Ceremony in San Antonio one year and counting how many from each school made the commendation. There was a middle school in the Woodlands that had 256 kids at the ceremony, (compare to 13 from our entire county). I went to look at their website and noticed that they routinely offer Algebra to their seventh graders. In our district you have to be "selected" just to get Algebra in the 8th grade.</p>
<p>Cangel, I know that is part of it but 1 in 4 ? 7% of the state's semifinalist in Illinois from one school? Now this Virginia school with 1 of 3 ? If historical numbers hold true that is @ one third of all the NMSemi's in the state of Virginia (using 2005 numbers), 170 out of 413 total Semi-Finalist (again-2005 numbers). I am stunned almost to the point of incredulity. Is this the state's math/science/liberal arts boarding school, or is this simply a magnet day school?(And sorry to digress OT but is this still good educational policy when it reaches one third?)</p>
<p>And while I digest this strange data , does this seem odd or even out of kilter to anyone else or as usual am I the last to know? I'll crawl back in my cave now. Sheesh.</p>
<p>soccerguy is talking about Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Northern VA. According to their website, this year they had 153 semifinalists (down from 170 last year) out of a little more than 400 seniors. They claim that it is the highest number of NMSFs of any high school in the nation. Who could doubt that???</p>
<p>When you are looking at stats of magnet schools or private schools that have a rigorous entrance requirement, those kids are preselected and have already proven that they score well on standardized tests and are capable of doing well academically. It's very different in a normal public school district where they are forced to accept every warm body of age who moves in within district lines. It should not be any surprise that these preselected kids do so well. They were selected for that very reason. What is more surprising is that even with their selectivity and admissions screening, they still get a goodly number of duds. Look at where the bottom 25% of some the class ends up going. There are kids who end up doing PG years--another year of highschool at a prep school, and a number who end up at non selective colleges. The other striking situation is how few end up going to the top state universities--those in the prep school, in particular. That is a category that gets a pass since those with the grades to get in usually go to a top private school, and those who would want to go here do not make the cut. Ironic when many kids at the middle of the class range at a public school do end up at those schools.</p>
<p>Curmudgeon:
Don't shoot me :-), I just took the figures from IMSA's fact sheet. The numbers for NM semifinalists are similar for the class of 2005 as well, so I don't think it's a typo. See pg. 3 & 4 from the pdf file at the site below:</p>
<p>There are other states with public schools for gifted kids in science & math - Indiana and Michigan come to mind, as well as the school in Northern VA mentioned above. Bear in mind that you are looking at the brightest kids from an entire <em>state</em> - given that, the %NM semifinalists may not be so strange.</p>
<p>Jamimom:
I don't know about the other statewide magnet schools, but the kids from IMSA (Illinois) seem to do pretty well in college. Quoting from their website:</p>
<p>"The five Illinois universities that enroll the highest number of IMSA graduates are University of Illinois at Urbana, Northwestern University, The University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Bradley University. The five out-of-state universities that enroll the highest number of IMSA graduates are Washington University (Missouri), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University (California), Harvard University (Massachusetts), and Rice University (Texas)."</p>
<p>I am very familiar with competitive entry college prep high schools and ruled several fine schools out for D in favor of more economic diversity (and other considerations) but those schools don't begin to have a 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 NMSemifinalist ratio. More like 1 in 8 or 1 in 10. And 1/3 of the state's NMSemi's from one 400 student school ? Somebody add up a 400 kid class from a couple of respected private schools in any state and see if they can get to 33% of that state's NMSemi's (other than national caliber boarding schools, and maybe even them) . I really doubt that it is there.</p>
<p>And Optimizerdad, although I was surprised at the Illinois numbers, they are probably in line with other states including Texas . Texas has two such schools, A Math/Science in Denton at North Texas and a Liberal Arts at Lamar University,at both of which D was repeatedly invited to apply.</p>
<p>Curmudge, I used to live in Richmond, and have a little knowledge of TJ - it is not a typical school by any stretch, not even a typical magnet school - think MIT in a high school. Add to a pre-tested, pre-selected population of kids a big dose of competition and emphasis on SATs and college admissions, and you get this result. My guess is the Illinois school is similar, like Stuyvesant or Bronx Science. The 1 in 4 is because they have gotten a lot of other high schools' potential or certain NMF contenders, and juiced everyone up "on steroids".
I wonder what an Andover or an Exeter's NMF % would look like? If my suppositions have any validity, they would have a lower % of NSMF because of fewer kids who "need the money". Their sports and other EC % might be higher, while a school like TJ (it is math and science after all) would be heavy on the Intel and Siemens.</p>
<p>And Curmudg, that's why they say these kids have a disadvantage at HYPSM, the entire Southern contingent at HYPS could come from Thomas Jefferson's senior class with no loss of quality.
(Don't worry, I went through the same sinking feeling last year when I realized how inadequate/limited my daughter's opportunities were, we thought kids had time to just be kids and learn to make jelly, not do cutting edge physics research. The TJ kids get a superior high school education that will be of value to them forever, BUT, in college admissions, they have to compete against THEIR peers, to some extent - my kid is not "their peer", in that sense)</p>