<p>It seems as if every so often there is a thread with this theme. On the other hand, there are a lot of kids in the top of the class who don’t “game the system” and do take the harder classes and then simply do well. I know for a fact that there were some eyebrows raised at graduation when my D and a few others were announced as being in the top ten. These were the students who did not talk about grades all of the time, were more social and were involved in activities such as dance team (D) or sports rather than the “typical” smart kid activities such as debate or academic team. I can’t say I know what classes these top ten took (it’s a fairly large school) but the GPA’s they achieved would literally not be possible even with straight A+'s unless the student was taking several AP classes. So that while this kind of cheating the system may happen in some schools, it isn’t universal.</p>