I generally encounter the subject of mass grade inflation on College Confidential and Reddit’s ApplyingToCollege forum, specifically in cases where the poster has a low SAT score (around the 1200-1350 range) and high GPA (3.75-4.00 unweighted and 4.2-4.7 weighted). My take on this, similar to most others, is that the poster most likely attends an easier, less rigorous high school, but, however, I wanted to ask if anyone had similar or different opinions and why?
That was the case of several students in the top 10 of D20’s class. The common denominator of those students were they had a parent who is employed by the school district either as a teacher or in another capacity. D20 used to complain about them getting up in the middle of a test and getting help from the teacher, even as a junior or senior. Several had very high GPA, 1250-1350 SAT, and a 1 or 2 on APs. All were disappointed in their admissions results.
First of all, an SAT of 1200-1350 is not low. Maybe it is by CC standards, but it is above average for all test takers. Second, there could be other reasons for this disparity. Maybe the student doesn’t do well on single day high pressure tests. Maybe the student had a bad day on test day.
The assumption in your question seems to be that the test Is accurate and the grades are wrong. Maybe the opposite is true. Maybe the grades are an accurate reflection of the students ability and the test is wrong.
FWIW, my daughter was like this. Contrary to @helpingmom40 ’s description, we did not have a parent employed by the school district who pushed for higher grades. My daughter did it all by herself. She ended up getting accepted everywhere she applied. She just graduated summa cum laude from her university and recently started a job at a large financial institution. So much for the “low” SAT scores.
Low SAT 1200-1350? hahahaha
I agree it is not low but the inability to pass an AP exam and 99 out of 100 gpa definitely shows a disparity, experience shows a potential cause. Most of what it on here is anecdotal information anyway. D20 had a 1460, 5s on all AP exams, and a gpa of 96.186, finishing at #20, and I don’t work at the school just for reference.
“inability to pass an AP exam and 99 out of 100 gpa definitely shows a disparity”
Agreed. IMO, this is more telling than a “low” SAT score. Lots of students don’t have access to test prep so the disparity can be greater on the SAT/ACT. For an AP class, students getting A+s should be at least getting 3s on the AP test.
That’s why colleges want to see the school report with grades so they can see the grade distribution for themselves.
Agreed, “low” in reference to this score range on CC drives me crazy.
I do believe that many high schools inflate grades, and I’m of the opinion that some parents get involved to ensure their children’s GPA is preserved.
Anecdotally, I’ve identified significantly more grade inflation in relation to SAT/ACT scores among our friends with children in private school vs. those in publics.
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The assumption in your question seems to be that the test Is accurate and the grades are wrong. Maybe the opposite is true. Maybe the grades are an accurate reflection of the students ability and the test is wrong.
Maybe grades are a reflection of the numerous thing that people like to point out, such as a student’s participation, ability to work hard, and other things. Though this, grades are mainly subjective, not considering class tests. In most cases, it does not reflect a student’s mastery of content. In contrast, however, the SAT is objective and does so. Moreover, could you please explain more? Your view and opinion are somewhat interesting.
Seems like the opposite situation (“low” GPA with top-end SAT/ACT) is more common on these forums among worried students.
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/grade-inflation-high-schools-2005-2016 suggests that grade inflation was greater in schools attended by students from higher SES backgrounds. This was based on comparing NC high school grades with NC state end-of-course (EOC) subject exam scores.
I disagree that the SAT is objective and reflects mastery of content. The SAT score reflects the ability of a student to take the SAT. That’s why prep courses work. Some students are naturally good at taking this type of test, others aren’t. If a student doesn’t work well under pressure on a long test, they may never do well. But how often in life is that skill really needed?
You seem to downplay participation and ability to work hard. In the adult world, those things are important. There was another student posting today about how he didn’t get an internship even though he thought he was a better coder than the person who did. Kids need to understand that being the smartest or objectively the best is not always what gets you ahead in life. Participation and hard work are important too. Maybe more important. Regardless, I have heard that studies show that high school grades are a better predictor of college grades than SAT scores (sorry - no links to back this up.)
Even The College Board found that HSGPA was a better predictor of college GPA than the SAT was (although by a smaller margin than some other studies).
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/national-sat-validity-study.pdf (table 5 on page 11)
First of all, test anxiety is a thing, and even students who can manage at the level of mid terms and finals can have issues with SAT tests.
More importantly, timed, standardized, multiple choice tests provide a very weak test of mastery. That’s not how any of the material relates to anything in real life, nor is it an indication as to whether a student can use the material to help them understand more advanced material.
Standardized, multiple choice tests are pretty weak at testing the ability to synthesize, and absolutely useless at testing higher order thought processes, like intuitive leaps, finding innovative and original solutions to existing problems, developing new methodology, etc.
What SATs do is test whether a student can apply problem-solving templates to similar problems well enough to select the correct answer out of 5 possible answers. It tests template fitting abilities, arithmetic abilities, memorization abilities, and the ability to do these quickly. Most “test prep” has to do with learning more template fitting, quick arithmetic, and learning how to memorize more efficiently, and developing methods of quickly accessing the memorized materials.
These are skills which are somewhat helpful in life, but they should not be confused with the extensive academic abilities required to succeed in college, nor with the type of intellectual talents that define intellectual “giftedness”.
A am also wondering why people raise the issue of students with high GPAs and lowish SATs, but are not nearly as focused on the many students with low GPAs and high SATs. I would think that the latter would be more of an issue.
After all, how can a student have gained academic mastery of 10 years of math and language in the three to six months prior to the SAT?
Do I just miss where people regularly claim that SAT scores are the best predictor, because I can’t recall any. I’m pretty sure GPA is also a better predictor than Extracurricular Activities, Recommendation Letters, Work Experience, Essays, etc. I rarely see posters discount those factors because they’re not the single most important item.
A lot of people seem to have the belief that the SAT just measures how well you prep for it, but while that is true to an extent, A LOT , and I mean A LOT, of the material is directly in high school math textbooks. For most questions, they just test the rules of material. For most practice tests, they will have quadratic equations in vertex form (y = a[x-q][x-p]) and simply ask you which graph matches the equation.
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As I wrote - template matching.
The issue to me is that there are many kids that have both top GPAs in very rigorous courses plus very high scores on the standardized tests, but there are then those with one but not both that want to be considered the same.
GPAs are important but so are SAT scores, especially since Khan Academy came along to level the playing field.
So isn’t this thread why schools say they look at everything? Not one single facet of someone’s application can represent that person in his or her entirety, and not one competent is the “most” dependable in terms of how successful that person will be in school. So many people criticize standardized tests and grades, but what about EC’s and essays? Essays could be written by someone else, not the student, and no one would really know. Essays could involve heavy editing by someone other than the student, and no one would ever know. EC’s can be padded and exaggerated, and probably no one would know. It just really depends on the strengths and weaknesses of each applicant. For my son, his EC’s are so-so. Hopefully his essays are OK. His stats are very good. Fo him it would be great if colleges only considered grades, rigor, and test scores, with very little consideration of EC’s and essays, but they do. So he will focus on schools that are more stat based. And that’s OK. I’m not saying that he is going to be more successful than someone with lower stats but more impressive EC’s, I’m just saying that each component to an application can be questioned.
The College Board has an obvious invested interest in showing a particular result. Their sponsored research often presents the results in a unique or non-standard way that increases the apparent benefit from SAT scores.
For example, the study linked above uses a self-reported HS GPA based on a check box selection. A student can select a checkbox saying that they are an A student (treated as 4.0) or a B student (treated as 3.0), but the student cannot say they have a 3.87 GPA. A less accurate and less precise HSGPA, makes the HSGPA correlation weaker. They use correlation (r) rather than variance( r^2). They emphasize the estimated correlation as if the sample had SAT scores with the full range from very low to 1600, rather than the actual scores, which are often clustered at the high end. They emphasize predicting first year GPA, rather metrics colleges are more concerned about such as graduation rate, first year retention, and cumulative GPA. They do not control for other key factors, such as income/SES. Perhaps most importantly, they treat college admissions as a simple model that only uses 2 criteria – SAT score and self reported GPA in isolation (no GPA contextual information about course rigor, grade distribution listed in HS profile, which classes have higher/lower grades, …). Colleges that are frequently discussed on this forum use a very different admission systems from this College Board model, which leads to a far smaller incremental benefit from SAT scores.
This contributes to why the CollegeBoard studies often find a far stronger benefit to test scores than other studies. Most (not all) studies not sponsored by CollegeBoard find little to no incremental benefit from SAT scores beyond other metrics, particularly if those other metrics include a measure of GPA and a measure of course rigor.