I think GPAs should be standardized

[Anonymous]

Listening to YCBK and ugh, so much of this admissions stuff is bs. Which we know.

One easy fix:
a standardized GPA.

It makes no sense that a 90 is an A some places and B another

Not on YCBK, but I also think cut off bdays should be standardized. Some of these kids are more than a year older than others by the time they get to applying to college. And people move. Make it Sept 1. Or whatever! Just make it standard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Listening to YCBK and ugh, so much of this admissions stuff is bs. Which we know.

One easy fix:
a standardized GPA.

It makes no sense that a 90 is an A some places and B another

Not on YCBK, but I also think cut off bdays should be standardized. Some of these kids are more than a year older than others by the time they get to applying to college. And people move. Make it Sept 1. Or whatever! Just make it standard.

I do agree that 19-year-old “leaders” and team captains have to be put in context with their 17-year-old brethren. It is weird that colleges don’t do that.

[Anonymous]

Even if a 90 was always an A, it wouldn't standardize the amount of work necessary to get an A.

[Anonymous]

GPA would still be so subjective, but I admire your spirit. A standard scale would be a move in the right direction.

Agree about the bday cutoff.

-Mom in NY with a 10 year old boy currently in 6th grade

[Anonymous]

I don't think this is going to fix the problem, which is really different grading standards across all schools, unless you force all teachers across the country to use a standardized rubric, and somehow make them assign grade exactly the same homework, essays, and exams and grade these with the same degree of strictness. In other words, not possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even if a 90 was always an A, it wouldn't standardize the amount of work necessary to get an A.

Of course. But let’s take some steps when we can.

At our school, a 97 is a 4.0. It’s clearly on the school profile that a 96 is a 3.8. But I’m sure plenty of readers see that 3.8 as a B in their head.

I’d love to see GPAs go and numbers in their place. A 99 is different than a 90. Stuy does this

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even if a 90 was always an A, it wouldn't standardize the amount of work necessary to get an A.

Yeah. Teachers/schools would just adjust grading to whatever a new scale is. There is nothing magical about the ruler used. Inches or centimeters, its the same length.

[Anonymous]

Agree w others that it wouldn’t solve the entire problem, but it would be better and I think would take some pressure off schools (parents really focus on gpa scales ime)

Also agree on cut off dates. My kids started kindergarten at 4 in NYC. Now that there’s expanded pre-k, push it back

[Anonymous]

GPA can never, ever be standardized. It isn't even standardized between students at the same high school, who have taken different courses. It isn't standardized even between students at the same high school who have taken the same courses with different teachers.

College admissions seems to treat GPA as standardized even while acknowledging that it is not.

[Anonymous]

I love these high schools w profiles that don’t even list their GPA to grade break downs. Everyone gets As. And sorry, we’re disclosing that a 90 is an A

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Even if a 90 was always an A, it wouldn't standardize the amount of work necessary to get an A.

Of course. But let’s take some steps when we can.

At our school, a 97 is a 4.0. It’s clearly on the school profile that a 96 is a 3.8. But I’m sure plenty of readers see that 3.8 as a B in their head.

I’d love to see GPAs go and numbers in their place. A 99 is different than a 90. Stuy does this

Readers see the grades in context of the school. And if the school sends a school profile with gps distributions, the readers will know where a given gps sits in the context of the class.

[Anonymous]

It’s hilarious to me that schools are test optional when seeing SAT within contexts actually pretty easy to do. And yet they lean on GPA which is very hard to put into context

Standardizing GPA would be a small but good step

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GPA can never, ever be standardized. It isn't even standardized between students at the same high school, who have taken different courses. It isn't standardized even between students at the same high school who have taken the same courses with different teachers.

College admissions seems to treat GPA as standardized even while acknowledging that it is not.

Thats a very good point

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GPA can never, ever be standardized. It isn't even standardized between students at the same high school, who have taken different courses. It isn't standardized even between students at the same high school who have taken the same courses with different teachers.

College admissions seems to treat GPA as standardized even while acknowledging that it is not.

College admission doesn’t treat gpa as standardized. Dumb parents do.

College admissions are holistic, and look at gpa in context of rigor relative to high school and high school”s reputation with respect to SAT and achievements and performance at college

[Anonymous]

a lot of admissions teams recalculate GPA based on their own internal metric. Many AOs have said this.

AOs know the schools that have rampant grade inflation and those that deflate.

There is NO POSSIBLE way to standardize GPA across the board. Kids are coming from different types of schools, different countries, different situations, and different educational models.