<p>My school is academically rigorous. In fact, a very few students get As in classes. It's not right that other schools have larger grading scales or grade inflation. How will colleges know that some high schools are more challenging than the others?</p>
<p>They will know based on your rank.</p>
<p>yep rank should do it,</p>
<p>what else? what about SAT scores?</p>
<p>Lower grades/high SAT scores can just make you look lazy. But if your GPA is lowish and your rank is still very high, colleges will know that no one at your school is getting higher grades.</p>
<p>My high school tells them that nobody in my class has all As, and that teachers actively worked against grade inflation.</p>
<p>Adcoms have magic powers. duh.</p>
<p>there is a fair share of factors adcoms can use to figure out that u come from a non-grade inflated high school. if ur school profile is any good, it will probably have a breakdown of GPA's and where ppl from that GPA range went. if adcoms see that ppl from, say, a 3.1-3.6 range get into very prestigious schools, it tells them something. rank, if u have it, will help. ur teacher recs will also show ur not slacking, which helps explain a lot</p>
<p>i talked to a former swarthmore dean, who told me that there is this really selective prep school in new york... for them an A is 87-100. a student from that school came to interview, and the dean saw that he had a 85.7 UW GPA. seem's pretty horrible, doesn't it? but the guy was first in his class. the dean was absolutely blown away by the guy's eloquence, his ability to express himself, and so on.</p>