<p>Thank you for the explanation, although I’m still not sure I quite get it. How does a school decide that the average grade will be a B, or that they will give twice as as many A’s? It seems like a test grade (at least on a multiple choice test) would end up being pretty easy to grade by percentages. Essays and papers could be graded more subjectively. </p>
<p>I met with an admissions person this year and she made a comment about grade inflation at my high school. I work very hard for my grades and didn’t really know what she meant by that.</p>
<p>Each school district and/or school (and/or teacher) gets to set its own grading policy. On a percentile system, if a strict coversion to letter grades is used, e.g., 90-100 = A, then grade inflation may happen by simply designing the test to allow most students to receive A’s and B’s. I must say it is difficult to judge grade inflation when magnate or specialized high schools are involved. By composition, the average students in these schools are above average, and in some cases, far, far above average.</p>
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<p>I bet what she meant is that relative to the other others schools with students applying to her college, your school seems to have more students with higher GPA’s or your school’s average GPA is substantially higher.</p>
<p>If most of us agree that grade inflation is a big factor, but that it’s offset by standardized tests, then what goes on a schools that are “test optional”? Are they evaluating students who don’t send scores via mental telepathy? Given the nonsense that goes on with high school grading/course rigor, I truly lament the current trend of de-emphasizing test scores. I constantly read profiles on CC where the student has a 4.0 GPA and mediocre scores. I’m sorry, but the SAT’s and ACT’s aren’t rocket science. If you can’t do Geometry and Algebra I or analyze high school level reading, your 4.0 becomes quite suspicious.</p>
<p>I suspect the same. If it is already hard enough for them to just read through the apps, how much time are they going to spend on reading the high school profiles and meticulously normalize the GPA’s of all the applicants? It is a huge job to properly normalize 20,000+ apps.</p>
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<p>I don’t think most adcoms agree with this. If they did, why would they give the most weight to GPA? (I guess they can still give more weight to the normalized GPA, but…see above.)</p>
<p>If I understand the original intent of the A-through-F grading system, C means average. A large group of students should therefore earn a C. Somewhat smaller groups of above- and below-average students should earn B and D, respectively. One or two truly exceptional or truly incompetent students should earn A and F, respectively.</p>
<p>I see no problem with this system. It correctly identifies a very small number of students as exceptional, and an A really means something objectively. If I ran my own private school, I would enforce this grading system strictly, and I would inform colleges of the meaning of these grades on students’ transcripts. And if my students with 2.9 GPAs couldn’t get into Podunk State, I would say, “Then you don’t belong there, anyway. Apply to one of the colleges that understands and appreciates the quality of education you received at this school.”</p>
<p>Actually, I dont think the number of applications is necessarily a big deal. If you could figure out a factor to use for normalization all you would have to do is assign that factor based on the school profile, and then multiply it by the GPA. Certainly not as time consuming as reading an essay. But how do you come up with that factor? IMO the use of the SAT reasoning test score alone is wholly adequate. At my kids school the same student may have SATs less than 2100, and ACTs over 34. Do you use some sort of combination of rank, SAT/ACT/AP/Subject tests? Do you give a benefit to kids who take and score well on all these tests? Is there another way to do it entirely? </p>
<p>Of course if youre talking about taking any of 100s of various class/grade scenarios and considering each one for 20K+ applications, thats completely impossible. </p>
<p>I think, like most things, it is just not that easy to figure out or define grade inflation and how much there is overall, or in any particular school. Ive seen differing studies on this, and in truth, most of what I see about this is anecdotal. </p>
<p>In fact, I bet adcoms evaluate this type of stuff in much the same way they evaluate an essay or extracurriculars. They look at the applicants classes, test scores and grades. Then they either take a look at the school profile or already have an impression of that school in their heads. Based on that, they probably give the applicant a rating of academic strength (maybe from 1 to 10) based on what they see. Then they give similar ratings in other areas - like essays, ECs etc.</p>
<p>Ooh! Ooh! I have an idea that I think is new! (But probably isn’t.)</p>
<p>What if a college accepts applications only from high schools that certify that the GPA on the transcript was calculated based on a formula developed by the college? This would distribute the burden of recalculating 20,000 GPAs across many schools, thus making it feasible for the college admissions office.</p>
<p>This could invite fraud, of course. A lazy or unscrupulous high school counselor could sign off that the GPA was calculated according to the formula, when in fact it wasn’t. But maybe there’s the seed of a good idea here?</p>
<p>Or…ooh! Here’s another idea!</p>
<p>What if a group of elite colleges got together and said, “We have developed this grading system, and we will accept applicants only from high schools that use it.” If it was a large enough group of highly-regarded colleges, I’ll bet many high schools would fall in line quickly, either out of a desire to see their kids admitted to said colleges, or due to pressure from parents desiring the same.</p>
<p>Interesting idea, mantori. Assuming honesty is given, which as you pointed out - can’t be taken for granted, then the burden of mapping GPA’s to colleges would be on the high schools. Do you think GC’s would take the time to understand the different college GPA systems (how many colleges are there?) and do this multiple times for every student? Nah. They can’t even mail out transcripts properly at my son’s school.</p>
<p>^ or in many cases know the last SAT submission deadlines, etc. So many of my students come to me, confused about something inaccurate their GC told them.</p>
<p>I’m a lot more understanding of heavy student burden making personalized attention difficult, than not knowing the basics! If you have a GC that can just do the administrative angle correctly, consider yourself lucky.</p>
<p>bovertine, you may be right, but I guess we’d like the process to be more rigorous and objective than just “take a look” and “impressions of that school in their heads.”</p>
<p>I like your idea of normailzing GPA’s using SAT reasoning test scores. Conceivably it can be done by finding out the average GPA of a school and the average SAT (or ACT) scores of the same school and go to a look up table for the normalized GPA adjustment based on a student current GPA.</p>
<p>^Just the right time to be making more money, right? I’m beginning to feel the weight of finaid apps, even as my S1 is relaxing from his December app rush.</p>
<p>To do this, I guess we’d have to come up with a conceptual “golden” GPA system and figure out a way to generate revenue from it and select our initial target market and line up the VC’s if the Ivies won’t cough up enough dough and … Or, we can turn this over to our kids as their research project :). Oops, the OP is hijacking the thread!</p>
Actually, I think the SAT reasoning and ACT tests are pretty poor for this purpose myself. I would think SAT subject test or APs would be of far more value, and I don’t think they are particularly good either. As I’ve said many times on CC, I don’t like MC tests, although I do very well on them myself. But I know others differ.</p>
<p>That’s why I don’t think they can come up with any rigorous method. Too much disagreement on what’s important.</p>
<p>^It may be still okay inspite of having folks with different-than-norm experiences on the MC tests. Since the average scores of the student body is used, the extremes will be folded in. We are using the average test scores, not an individual’s test score, to normalize an individual’s GPA.</p>
<p>Schools will only agree to normalize against SAT reasoning test scores if there is basic agreement on their validity for measuring academic performance. If anything, educators are placing less emphasis on their validity these days. </p>
<p>I believe it would be possible to develop valid standardized tests, but they would involve short answer, problem solving without answer choices, and essays. And these would take too long to grade.</p>