What is the deal with Grade Inflation?

Applying to College
1

Sorry if I am posting in the wrong location.

Looking at several threads, it seems like the word grade inflation is floating around. It seems as if you have a 4.0 but below a 26 ACT, then your school has inflated grades. Somehow, this seems quite counterintuitive. I know what “grade inflation” is , but it just doesn’t seem realistic.

The words “you got a 27 on the Math ACT, but you got an A in Calc 1 and 2 at a community college, there scores must be inflated.”

or another example “you got a 26 in ACT english and an A in AP lang, that means your grades are inflated.” have been implied through my threads. I do not see the value in these phrases.

What does this come from? I know of super preppy schools which are amazing which grade harshly. I got a 5 on both my AP tests and had 2 A’s in the classes. Were they extremely difficult? No, Did they have to be? No, my teachers explained the core concepts and gave us enough work to enlighten us. We did not have boatloads of homework, or extremely harsh tests. Of course we practiced for the tests.

So, is “grade inflation” basically the same as saying, “I go to a very expensive school, that is prestigious and expensive, and my teachers grade harshly. I have a lower gpa than you, but because my classes were harder, I am better than you or my gpa means the same.”

It seems like it is very pretentious, to call something “grade inflation”, when in reality that is normal at a public school. I do not see why so many see a correlation between the SAT and ACT and intelligence. The phrase you only got a “20 something on the act, and your gpa is really high, that means your school is inflating their grades.” is really quite ridiculing. It is basically saying that since you are not good at a test, you can not be a scholar.

2

http://www.usnews.com/dbimages/master/21338/vital-stats-110413.gif

When the average GPA has gone up by 0.4 in 20 years (I couldn’t find a chart of HS grades over the last 50-60, but I remember seeing one in the Economist that showed an even steeper increase), a lot of students are getting A’s who maybe would’ve gotten B’s back in the day.

I agree that standardized tests are an asinine way to measure intelligence when colleges differentiate between an 800 and a 720 section score (a difference of 2-3 wrong answers), but more extreme examples (like a 27 in math for an A student in Calc I or II) are an easy way for colleges to spot kids who’ve benefited from very generous grading. There’ll be some students who perform poorly on a test despite having the ability, but strong grades in math at a rigorous school are correlated with high scores.

AP scores are the other way for schools to gauge grade inflation - if you have a 5, that’ll indicate real mastery of a subject, while students with A’s or B’s in their AP courses to go with 1’s or 2’s on the exams are generally assumed to have inflated grades.

3

I am just bad at the ACT math. I am really practicing it this time around. The difference in level between calc 1 and 2, being the concepts, is so much different than the ACT math. They are a world apart. BTW

I personally thought the AP test were tough, but were much more focused, and easier than the ACT. There were testing strategies of course, but the test was actually more on knowledge than strategy.

Do you see it overused on this forum, though?

4

No. It’s not overused. It’s a real thing. But no one “knows” your personal circumstances, including colleges. And they will make those assumptions.

BTW: people who don’t test well, I often wonder how they test in school?

Re your math, maybe you just had not covered all the ACT math yet.

5

What do you mean by not covered all the ACT math?

I test very well in school, but not on the ACT.

6

Getting A’s on Calc 1 and 2, getting 5’s on the AP Calc exam, should show enough mastery for math.

ACT Math tests on Geometry, Algebra 2, and Pre-calc stuff so it might be helpful to review those concepts.

Practicing is a good idea. This way you won’t be caught off guard by the rapid pace of the test.

7

Harvard gives all A’s to students because it would be unfair to give a HARVARD guy a C or a D.

I’ll take the B student who had the tenacity to remove the 100GE PIC from the MX480 router sitting unused (even though our group doesn’t own the router), so that he could move forward with his project. Finishes the project in five days time.

The A student was paralyzed with their project and couldn’t move forward and kept pestering the manager on what to do since this situation was never present in any textbook. Finishes the project in ten days time.

I’ll promote the B student. Has the technical skills and thinking skills which can’t be measured with any text book or standardized test.

8

I took a practice test again tonight. I am hitting a constant 30 or so on the practice tests, which is pretty good.I find that I am screwing up the most on the geometry and n integer questions. I am finding the geometry questions to be most hazy.

I should curse myself for taking algebra 2 as a freshman, that seems like so long ago now. It is quite a fast test. I will slowly improve.