If you put up the 42nd student from Harvard-Westlake against all the Val’s, I think they would likely be well into the top half. They had 38 students go to Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, or UChicago.
1 Like
Harvard Westlake is not exactly a cross section of America, but ok, point taken. So a student near their 25th percentile would be academically stronger than a valedictorian elsewhere? Maybe that’s true, I really don’t know. At any rate, I hope AOs can differentiate between a school where 40% of the kids have an unweighted 4.0 and schools where no student ever had an unweighted 4.0, but I don’t know that they can.
My two daughters attended different high schools.
One attended a high school where a 97 is an A+, but only counts as a 3.7 towards GPA. I was shocked to find that a friend’s daughter at a different school had a 4.0 as a junior, but then he pointed out that at their high school a 90 counts as a 4.0. There certainly seems to be a lack of consistency in terms of how high schools do this.
My other daughter graduated as the #1 student in her small high school in spite of getting a B+ at some point. This would never have happened at my other daughter’s high school. One single B+ might leave you in the top 10%, but not even remotely close to being the top student.
Many years ago I attended a different high school (but in Canada) where the #2 student in the high school had an 89.9 average (it was a very easy number to remember). Here where we live now an 89.9 average would definitely not put you in the top 10%. Top 20% might be dubious.
High schools certainly vary quite widely in terms of how they do grading and how they compute GPA.
At least in our experience university admissions seem to be quite knowledgeable about these differences. At least in our experiences the acceptances and even merit scholarships (where offered) seem to account for this relatively well.
I think that this is a different issue, but is indeed an issue. The pandemic might have made this worse. One daughter when in university was given a take home closed book mid term exam that included material that had not been taught in class and was not in the assigned reading in the text book. Of course more than 1/2 the class ignored the “closed book” requirement and just looked up the answers on-line. The honest students were at a big disadvantage. I told her that if the final was also closed book, she should call me if there was anything that she had not been taught – she would find that I had an almost “Wikipediatic” knowledge of the most obscure facts. She got the hint, I think.
One relative attended a private high school in England. He said that he learned how to cheat his way through tough exams. He did not elaborate on this and I did not press him.
In terms of the original question: “Do the adcoms understand the differences from school to school and adjust?” I think that they mostly do. While it seems unlikely that they are perfect, to me this does not seem to be the biggest problem with university admissions.
I agree that the exclusion of cheaters is not a top AO priority as they face a growing pile of applications and try to meet institutional strategic goals. It’s unfortunate. GPAs can be gamed in ways that are often more accessible to students than “messing” with their standardized test scores. Some gaming is perfectly legit: timing of classes/rigor, etc. Other “gaming” is cheating, plain and simple. And the variability in grade remediation (from teacher to teacher, school to school) is another factor, though not directly controlled by students. So back to my original statement - prior posts allude to the idea that AOs aren’t catching cheaters, and that is frustrating, but I don’t see that as something that is going to change any time soon, because there isn’t an alignment of incentives to expend AO energy in that direction. At least until they’ve inadvertently filled their school with a bunch of catchable liars. (They may already be full of uncatchable liars, we wouldn’t know, but I doubt it). Of course, if perceived unfairness pushes students and families to start “ratting out” known or suspected cheating (with anonymous phone calls, etc), that would just highlight the absurdity of elite college admissions today. We know the motivations of the tattlers would likely be self-serving rather than disinterested. The honest broker should be the high school, ideally.
My kids’ public high school usually has 30+ unweighted 4.0s per class. They don’t weight classes at all and don’t do class rank.
So how do colleges evaluate those students? Do they give quartile ranking or anything? If everyone is number one then no one is number one?
I agree with this, but also want to add rigor plays a role, especially at schools around here where honors and AP get the same 0.5 weighting: the transcripts can look very different even just comparing kids in the top10-15% (which is fairly easy to figure out based on the GPA distribution on the profiles that go to colleges).
1 Like
The transcript has to have an impact in this case, I would think: ie, course rigor.Jeff Selingo’s book talks about AOs scanning the transcript noting whether the applicant challenged themselves. I am blanking on the name of it, but it is a great read to get “inside” details on what actually goes on.
Re: how do colleges evaluate those students?
maybe colleges could use a standard test for all?!
(i dont know; but i guess what I’ve seen from 4 kiddos - 3 different high schools in our town – that there are many many more high GPAs than high ACTs. I get it all for high end competitive high schools that colleges know; but for underperforming HSs trying to get kids to graduate, i think tests are one good part of standing out when GPAs are all so high). 
3 Likes
I’m guessing the colleges know the school is like this. They look at rigor, test scores, honors etc. The school had many kids going to Ivy’s etc. They had 29 National Merit Finalists this year too.
1 Like
AO’s at selective schools get a school’s profile and they have a fair idea what the GPA means. The problem I see is with large universities that do not have/do not want to put resources into these types of activities and have hard cut-offs for admission and merit. TO years have made this situation even worse.
2 Likes
Some teachers here have resorted to setting up cameras to curb the cheating. My son is FAR from a 4.0 student, but his LOR specifically mentioned his academic honesty and interest in learning for learning’s sake, so I suspect the behaviors you mention must be rampant. It’s a shame.
Our local school gave everyone A’s during spring of 2020. It really diluted the accomplishments of the kids at the top of the class.
1 Like
I think ppl put too much weight into the National Merit thing. It’s like the GPA out of context it doesn’t mean anything. A NJ kid with 221 does not make it but would have made the cut in almost every other state. MD the bar was 224 this year.
3 Likes
Same for California!! If it’s national merit, then the cutoff should be standardized across all 50 states.
7 Likes
It really is a shame. It’s so sad how many people don’t get that cheating is wrong. Also, I get that grades are important, but they certainly aren’t the be all and the end all. My kids may not be 4.0 students and they didn’t always have the best grades, but they were kind and honest people. Teachers always commented on how nice and well-mannered they were. They also enjoyed learning for learning’s sake too. The valedictorian in my daughter’s class, was not a real nice kid. The teachers didn’t like him and he was hard to be around. Just shows that good grades doesn’t always make up for bad character. I think parents sometimes emphasize the wrong thing. Who cares if the kid is a horrible person when they have a 4.0 and is going to Harvard?
4 Likes