<p>"The saddest part is that schools that are trying to maintain integrity in their curriculum and grading systema DO end up penalizing their students in a world where grade boosting shenanigans and gamemanship are amply rewarded."</p>
<p>My kid goes to a school like this. I was happy to see that a couple of colleges requested a copy of a graded paper as part of their applications. I wish more schools did this. At least there would be some concrete comparison between "A" work at different high schools.</p>
<p>I agree with this idea, shoshi, & have suggested this myself on more than one occasion on CC. (Particularly if mailed directly by the school, in a school envelope, & with the teacher's comments/grades right on there.)</p>
<p>94-100: A / 4.0
90-93: B+ / 3.5 (yea, a 93 gets you a 3.5)
84-89: B / 3.0
80-83: C+ / 2.5
etc</p>
<p>.5 weight for most IB classes (first year of science, all of TOK, maybe a couple others, not weighted). No weight for preIB. Highest gpa in my class was a 4.22 (every single grade an 'A'), kid who could take more math past IB, highest GPA that wasn't accelerated past BC calc in math was 4.18. I'd say most IB diploma kids had GPAs in the 3.7-3.9 range. I'm sure there were some kids that had very few (or no) IB classes that pulled all A's or close to all A's that would push our rankings (or "estimated ranking", school didn't rank) down.</p>