<p>" If the top scoring student got a 75% on a test, that was his grade for the test, it was not scaled to an A."</p>
<p>In the end of the semester though the highest grade was not a 75% C though, right?</p>
<p>^ there was at least one qtr when there were no A’s in the class. </p>
<p>I am not sure I agree with you though in principal that classes should all be graded on a curve. I expect anyone getting an A in the class or test has mastered the material. If they take a test and only get 75%, they haven’t mastered the material. Whether the fault is difficult material or a bad teacher, it doesn’t matter they haven’t mastered the material.</p>
<p>
I don’t know. Depends on the class. It might just be that the tests are too hard.</p>
<p>If you are in a good high school, where the kids typically are very bright and get great scores, if the highest grade in the class is a 75, there is probalby something askew in your grading system.</p>
<p>And as I posted on another thread, there are lots of AP tests where a 75% or lower would get you a perfect score. </p>
<p>I would bet there are lots of universities where a 75% on an engineering test (the kind of tests I know about) would be considered pretty good. Maybe you didn’t “master” the material, but you had a reasonable degree of competence in it.</p>
<p>The idea that a 75% means they haven’t mastered the material doesn’t really make sense. I’ve had plenty of classes in college where a 75% is an A. This isn’t some tier 4 regional state school or a community college either, it’s a very well ranked University.</p>
<p>Qwerty, stop copying me! I only copied once. :)</p>
<p>
True. As an engineer, I can attest to the fact that the program is rigorous and difficult. In some instances the tests may have been too hard, but in many the material was just very difficult. Eng builds on itself year after year, so hopefully after 4 years of classes one starts to understand the material better, iykwim.</p>
<p>Type and think slower and I’ll stop.</p>
<p>I’m done. ;-)</p>
<p>My son’s school treated the 90=A, etc., as a strict rule that all teachers had to follow. Some teachers gave very hard exams but offset the lower averages with generous extra credit, in order to ensure that the best student could still get A’s. Other teachers screwed the students by giving really hard exams, not offering extra credit, and then saying, “You’re an excellent student, and I’d like to give you an A, but my hands are tied because you didn’t get a 90 average, school policy says blah blah blah, etc.” I think those teachers were jerks. (But they were still good teachers.)</p>
<p>You shouldn’t have grading systems where a normal person can get a 97. Most of my teachers never gave more than an 80-85% in their entire career, so there is an scope for any level of achievement to be rewarded. And you had to work pretty hard to get 40 out of many of them. From the outside, it seems that too much of US high school grading is just the accumulation of points for busy-work, and little really challenging assessment.</p>
<p>The OP asked if different grade scales impacted admissions and merit aid. Our school district recently changed the grade scale due to demands from some parents. The parents complained that the students from our area were at a disadvantage in college admissions. D was a senior at the time so I called the colleges on her list and they all told me that they see many different grade scales and that there was no inherent advantage/disadvantage to one or another. The applicant’s test scores, class rank and strength of schedule were considered in order to put the grades in perspective. Please note that these were all very competitive schools.</p>
<p>As for merit aid, it depends. Some schools award merit within the context of their applicant pool. For example the top x % of the applicants get offered merit. I will tell you that D’s GPA FAR exceeded the reported “average” GPA of accepted candidates for the school she attends and she wasn’t offered a dime in merit. So I can only conclude that other factors were at work here. </p>
<p>At other schools, merit is awarded for a certain GPA (sometimes in conjunction with test scores), in that case the grade scale could possibly make a difference. I say possibly because when our grade scale changed the teachers changed their own grading standards along with it and the students did not necessarily end up with higher GPA’s.</p>
<p>My take - in general it is not worth worrying about,</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But again, unfortunately, larger and less competitive universities are more likely to do admissions “by the numbers,” putting someone with a 3.45 GPA from a demanding high school at a disadvantage versus someone with a 3.55 GPA from a mediocre school. (I use those numbers because 3.5 is a common cutoff for automatic scholarships.)</p>
<p>^
That’s why I specified that these were competitive schools.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So it may not have helped anyway.</p>