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<p>Why? Neither grades nor GPA’s hold intrinsic meaning, but that does not imply that we can not perceive them as meaningful without the dependence of some other metric, such as perception of college admissions chances; we regularly derive non-pragmatic meaning. Even in the cases in which we do not imbue that meaning, we can hypothesize the existence of such dependence on the grades themselves, such as one’s peers’ opinions of academic competency, which are unlikely to be blind to grades in narrow lieu of GPA. Whether it should matter is a separate consideration, but it seems certain that it would matter to some people.</p>