<p>Momofthreeboys, it’s not necessarily grade inflation; it depends on what was required of the students and how the students fare. I’ve seen schools give extra credit where grades go over 100. I keep reading here about kids with a 4.0 who have middling SATs (1500-1800); if that’s common, there’s a problem. I heard of one school district that gives kids enrolled in AP classes college credit no matter what the AP score is by officially giving them dual enrollment credit. There is a lot of grade inflation out there but it’s hard to determine that without more information.</p>
<p>Ecouter, your high school should send the colleges a school profile that should give them some idea of how to interpret your grades. It might have a description of the school’s curriculum and philosophy, a breakdown on scores and grade distribution – enough info so the colleges can have some idea where you fall in your class and how competitive your school is. Very roughly speaking, the less the colleges know about your high school, the mor important your test scores.</p>
<p>turbo…none of the mentioned. The school enrollment is 1570, overachieving is an anomaly, median income is low, and tutors are unheard of. Class rank is a closely held secret until senior year, but from what we can surmise chances are he is in one of the top 4 positions right now.</p>
<p>This is another area where the statistics don’t tell the whole story. In addition to all the crazy variations on GPA the colleges have to somehow take into account, there is the aspect of which courses were taken, and what grades received in those courses, rather than less meaty courses in which a higher grade is less meaningful. Most colleges apparently discard the “weight” of a weighted GPA, preferring to recalculate according to their own arcane systems, but that doesn’t mean that a heavy course load and concomitant slight lowering of GPA isn’t understood to mean more to an adcom than an easier load and a perfect score. Sure, it’s best to get all As, but every adcom interview I’ve ever read stressed that a B–or even Two!–was not significant. They look at the whole picture, and GPA is just shorthand.</p>
<p>Quite apart from anything else, teachers are subjective beings. We’ve all had teachers with whom we just didn’t mesh, if not actually conflicted with; if you have a pattern of solid As, with one class of Bs, it seems to me reasonable for an adcom to look at that and think, either that kid just doesn’t get that subject, or (especially if the kid did better in earlier or subsequent years) that teacher didn’t reach that kid. It happens, and it’s not necessarily either party’s fault. </p>
<p>Which is to say, yet again, that grades and test scores really are just numbers, but their apparent objectiveness is illusory.</p>