Let's talk GPA

High schools handle grading differently, which is why I’m surprised that colleges rely so heavily on GPA for admissions decisions and merit award calculations. Especially in this day of test optional/ and even test blind.
In my small sample size (my fam), I have seen how 3 different high schools can differ- one HS does not allow test retakes, another HS sometimes allows one retake for up to 85% credit, the third HS allows unlimited test retakes for full credit. Furthermore, even the way grades are calculated varies tremendously - one school has 30% of grades is homework, 30% tests, etc. Another school has 90% tests and 10% quizzes, no grades for HW or projects. These also vary from subject to subject.
My kid at the school that allows unlimited test retakes has a 3.95 GPA. My kid at the school with no test retakes has 3.5 GPA, which I’ve learned is considered a poor GPA for college admission. He did get admissions offers with that GPA but only from schools that also considered his 1400+ SAT.
Can you guys shed any light on this? Do the adcoms understand the differences from school to school and adjust?
Thanks

1 Like

Colleges claim they take into account high school context but I rather doubt it. In any event, many scholarships/auto-admits are tied to gpa regardless of type of high school.

2 Likes

What I’ve heard from AO’s (including a couple I have spoken to socially) is that they have a “profile” for each school and therefore know how to contextualize GPA’s specific to the school. So they know what a school’s average GPA is, how many “rigorous” classes the school offers, how many rigorous classes the average and exceptional students take (because some HS’s will restrict this and others won’t), what the average weighted GPA with those classes is, etc. So if HS A has an average unweighted GPA of 3.6/4.0 and a weighted GPA of 4.5/5, and HS B has an average GPA of 3.2/4 and a weighted of 4.2/4.5 possible, they will know. Some schools can go further. They know how past attended students from each HS have fared at their school and whether there is a correlation between those students stats and activities and their college performance, which would can them identify the particular type of student at HS A that will thrive at their college. If they see a bunch of 5.0’s from HS B consistently struggling at their college but find 3.7’s from HS C consistently excel, they will note that.

The gist of all this, unless you are from a school with almost no enrollment track record with a particularly college, is you are being judged against your current and historic particular HS peers even more than your grade level peers across different HS’s. This is why a great HS college counselor (and many are not great) can often have a very good sense of a students shot at a particular college – because they both know how that college perceives them and who else from your peer year is applying and will be exciting to that college.

But as someone noted above, not every college has the resources or time to do this as well as others, so it is inevitable that HS grade inflation does help some students a bit. I would bet that most of the extremely selective schools do have this level of analysis though.

5 Likes

I am consistently shocked by the number of unweighted 4.0s I see here on CC. There hasn’t been an unweighted 4.0 from my kids’ school in at least the last 4-5 years. My S23 is 7th in his class with an unweighted 3.7 and weighted 4.6. One would hope AOs could compare a valedictorian from my kids’ school with a 3.9 to someone ranked 42nd with an unweighted 4.0, but I’m not sure how accurately that nuance can be deciphered.

8 Likes

Some of it is private schools that are intentionally grade inflate, some of it is pushy kids and their parents who pressure teachers who feel more vulnerable to holding the line at no than they used to, some of it is teachers who tried to hold the line and had negative consequences so just gave in and started grading easier to avoid trouble, and a little is legitimately more kids who are doing whatever it takes to earn straight A’s because they live in a super competitive world.

As an example of the second reason above, my kids have observed first hand certain peers who regularly get their grades improved because because first they, then if they fail their parents, persistently press the issue with the teachers until they get the outcome they want. If that doesn’t work, they start complaining about the teacher on social media or going to the curriculum supervisors, and up the food chain. It’s always conveyed as if the grade isn’t the issue but if the grade improves all the pressure goes away. Many of those same students parents hire people to give them the diagnosis necessary to get extra time on tests too. I’ve read there’s a direct correlation between the economic prosperity of a school community and the rate of student’s diagnosed as needing extra time on tests. I read about a school district where over 40% of students were eligible for extra time.

A couple of my kids were frustrated by what they perceived as the penalty they got by not cheating or having us pressure teachers for grade changes like some of their peers, some of which went to top schools despite it being an open secret among their peers that they cheated. These kids who did it justified it as fair because others were doing it too and they needed to to be on an even playing field. I’m sure the parents paying shady physiologists for extra test time recommendations self justified for the same reason.

At my kids HS, there was a kid who literally got caught having stolen tests from the office of a teacher and selling them to peers to cheat on a test. Allegedly not for the first time. He got three days suspension that then didn’t go on his permanent record and went to a great school who probably had no way to know about it. That he wasn’t expelled says a lot about how much sway parents have, how fearful schools are to hold kids accountable in the face of vengeful parents and part of what is behind grade inflation. (Another kid who was the senior class president was arrested for violently beating someone in a road rage incident (that he initiated) in town and still spoke at graduation a month later; When some athletes were caught on a nationally viral video doing something racist the school made a show of suspending them from the team at the end of their senior year season but still honored them at awards night weeks later; Bottom line, there’s very little consequences for bad behavior these days.)

3 Likes

My kids go to a small private school and there is no arguing a grade, if you got a B, you got a B, even if it’s an 89.9. I know this because I also teach there. Our students are super competitive, high achievers, but there is no one with a perfect transcript coming out of our school.

2 Likes

Yep, I certainly wasn’t implying it’s all private schools. My kids school that did all the bad examples I gave is public. Some good and bad behavior in both categories.

My older kids went to public school and we saw a lot more grade inflation and cheating there.

1 Like

Article that talks about the over-use of 504’s in affluent schools. It doesn’t just help with standardized tests – it can help with tests in classes which can improve GPA’s too.

4 Likes

College admissions use a high school’s profile to understand the grading rubric and determine where an applicant stands in relation to peers at that school.

In the case of the New England boarding schools, for instance, the rigor is well understood but, every year, parents expect colleges to accept a lower GPA from their boarding school over a higher GPA from a less rigorous school. What they fail to understand is that colleges aren’t evaluating their student against those from a high school they didn’t attend. Instead, their student is being evaluated only against their peers at that particular BS, and SOME of those peers ARE getting top GPAs, so there is no leniency when the school’s profile reveals exactly how that applicant stacks up against peers.

So, yes, adcoms understand the difference from HS to HS but there is no adjustment to be made as each student’s GPA is evaluated within the context of their particular high school. Most college admissions processes assign a score to each applicant file where GPA, evaluated within the context of the given HS, is just one piece of the overall score.

Every year on the prep forum we beat the drum: If preserving a 4.0 GPA is your primary goal, boarding school may not be for you. You may have a better shot at that from your LPS.

7 Likes

This is true. My husband is a former AO.

1 Like

The GPA itself doesn’t matter a whole lot. Well it does for colleges who are less selective. But for highly selective colleges, they rely more on the class rank. The thinking is that students who rise to the top of their class are the most desirable.

Not saying this is right or wrong, but thats the way it works. So getting a high rank is really the key for ultra selective colleges. Some high schools go to great lengths to obscure class rank. But it is a trivial task for admissions offices to impute class rank based on prior applications, and standing within the class. The college counselor letter also gives a glimpse at how the student stands.

In Texas, where top 7% are guaranteed admission into UT Austin, some families have gone to great lengths. Including moving to a less competitive school district to ensure high rank.

6%. The percentage has decreased over time.

3 Likes

How do AOs know what a matriculated student’s college GPA is, since that would be private information? Do they go off public info like Dean’s List or Latin honors?

AO’s also typically address a geographic region over an extended period of time and get to know the subtleties beyond what’s in the schools’ profiles. Though this is probably less true at state schools with many more applicants and a smaller dedicated AO staff. Seasonally-hired application readers won’t have this experience.

I suspect AO’s at an institution have access to historical aggregate performance data for students at that same institution.

1 Like

They may not see individual students’ college GPAs, but the college’s institutional research likely tracks students’ college GPAs in relation to their high schools and high school GPAs in aggregate*, and presumably provides that to admissions people if they want that context when reading an application.

*I.e. stuff like 3.8-4.0 HS GPA students from high school X tend to average 2.2 college GPAs at this college, but 3.8-4.0 HS GPA students from high school Y tend to average 3.5 college GPAs at this college, suggesting that high school Y students are better prepared for college work at this college.

4 Likes

While I would like to think colleges do that, surely 99% of high schools do not have sufficient numbers enrolling in the most elite schools to offer meaningful data. If only 1 student a year attends Harvard, and not even every year, there wont be any statistical conclusions to draw from that one data point. Yes, the HADES schools, and a few elite public high schools send a sizeable quantity of kids every year, but most do not

There are definitely schools out there where the 42nd ranked student at one is more academically talented than the Val at another.

8 Likes

I’m not sure how that’s possible, but if that’s the case one would hope they’re looking at rigor.