If everyone indeed has a 3.9 or better, there's a problem.
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Anonymous
So your kid only has anxiety for standardized year-end AP tests, yet he absolutely nailed the classroom tests in the same AP courses with the same content? Sounds like the answer is 'yes,' given his perfect grades in those AP classes. Or ....... could it be that the grades are inflated at this "competitive HS" ? Perfect A's in AP classes really should translate into 4s and 5s on those same AP tests. Unless there's something a little off about those perfect A's. |
Anonymous
yes he's is completely fine taking tests in school and now that he's in college he literally has a 4.0. So no I do not think it's the "inflated" grading at our high school. I have no evidence to support your argument. Do you? |
Anonymous
| Oh and yes he did get As in his APs and all 4 and 5 on his AP tests, including the one he threw up before. Its the pressure of the big TEST the Sat and the ACT. |
Anonymous
And you can explain why the score is low and the grades are high in the application. Look, you hate the test because it is the place where your kid doesn't shine. Your kid has trouble with this one part of the application. It isn't the only thing they will look at. However, as you see on here, two kids at different schools both get 79.5 and 89.5 semester grades and one gets a B- final grade and other gets an A. So the college sorting machine cuts out one for having a 3.5 and keeps the other for having a 4.0. Colleges cannot truly grasp the differences in grading among schools -- some sure, but not all of them. If the college also gets to see that 3.5 kid got a 1500 in one sitting of the SAT and kid 2 got a 1290, it might make them look at those two kids a little more holistically to see what gives. You don't want that, but why should anxious bad test taker be given an automatic advantage over the other kid with the same percentage grade simply because your district grossly inflates GPAs? |
Anonymous
"My kid is an anxious test taker, and throws up before big tests, therefore schools should not give academic tests for college entrance." Really? My kid has a common physical disability that makes him terrible at sports, therefore schools should not consider sports for college admissions. Yeah, my statement, while a more logical one for acadmeoic admissions, isn't going to work either. |
Anonymous
It's pretty clear you haven't spent much time with adcoms, because they actually can grasp the differences very well and know the schools and can analyze the profiles. They also have data telling them how graduates of each HS perform at their college. It ain't rocket surgery. Sure they make mistakes sometimes, we all do, but they do know the schools and that is why every admissions office is arranged by region. |
Anonymous
I actually did not say that at all and my kid applied with his score. My point is only that there are kids out there whose scores do not necessarily tie to their ability to do the work. I am not personally a proponent of test optional, but it should just be one piece of the puzzle and was responding to the PPs point that those who have a low score and high grades might mean that kid is less likely to do well in college because they insist there must be grade inflation. I am responding to say I have such a kid and that it is not because of grade inflation that he has high GPA and he is doing great in college. I see that there are people on this board who simply cannot fathom that. |
Anonymous
Lots of good points. You also have to consider kids like my DC who is perfectly capable of doing A+ work, but has executive function issues / ADHD and often has forgotten to turn in the work after doing it or forgot to do it but could have done an excellent job if they hadn't forgotten, then gets points off for the assignment being late, and it's because of such situations that their gpa is lower than their classmates. Not because DC is any less intellectual or smart or capable of understanding the material and engaging with it. And in fact, DC's high standardized test scores -- across the board-- demonstrate this, and it's why we are grateful to have those test scores be a part of the application. Doesn't mean we expect DC to get in to selective schools, but it will demonstrate to matches that they are, indeed, a student with potential. |
Anonymous
Anecdotal evidence only. College grades are inflated too. Most people in higher education are aware of this. Outside of killer CS and engineering and pre-med programs, the expectation is all As. Personally, n =1, I recently completed a bachelor's degree at UMCP in the social sciences. I'm a middle aged career switcher. My GPA on graduation was 3.9. I put almost no effort into that degree. Spent a couple hours a week at most writing discussion board BS. Did one group project. Took tests that I didn't study for and scored 99%+ Didn't buy the books for most classes. 3.9. Entirely new field for me. No effort. State flagship university. My first undergrad degree in the 80s netted me a 3.2 or 3.2, at a different state flagship. So much harder |
Anonymous
Aaannnddd... this is the moment the post becomes valueless. |
Anonymous
This is not true in my experience. I am a prof in the social sciences and have two kids in college (1 at UVA and 1 W&M)--both kids are smart, working really hard and getting mainly Bs (and even Cs here and there!) in social sciences--and only rarely an A. I see the work they are producing and it blows me away--the standards have gone FAR up in recent decades for what is required. They are writing research papers with dozens of peer-reviewed empirical sources. Undergrads are learning stats that usually grad students are. It's not unusual for an undergrad political science, psychology or econ student to have to pick up R and GIS. The idea that these are fluff majors giving out all A's is inaccurate--the selective schools are getting more and more competitive and the students are doing more complex things. Actually meet them, look at their work and tell me it's even remotely compatible to what we did as undergrads back then (and I was a STEM undergrad!). Go to an undergrad research conference in the social sciences and see what they are all doing now. This is in the selective schools of course--I'm not as experienced with less selective schools. |
Anonymous
but isn't your experience anecdotal too? and really what does all of this matter in the real world? Can you tell me that there are certainly people from these inflated grading schools that are out there failing in their careers? Most of the time, people fail in their careers because they are not able to learn and are not hard workers, not because they did not get 98th percentile in the SAT. |
Anonymous
It isn't that people can't fathom that; it that it isn't a reason to do away with the tests altogether, especially since there are kids with the opposite profile. |
Anonymous
Reading is fundamental. The very next sentence in my PP points out that all of higher education understands that grade inflation in college is real, persistent and widespread. I know that you cannot read long things. For others though, here's some data in context: "The data are definitive: it’s never been easier to get an A at Princeton. A- was the median grade in the 2018-2019 academic year. 55 percent of course grades were in the A-range. In 1998, they were 43 percent of course grades, according to a faculty report I acquired from Mudd Manuscript Library. B-range grades comprised 34 percent, and the C-range comprised six percent. D’s were merely half a percent. A Princetonian’s chance of getting a F was one in a thousand. The remaining four percent went to “passes.” https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2020/01/the-decline-and-fall-of-grade-deflation A’s represent 43% of all letter grades, an increase of 28 percentage points since 1960 and 12 percentage points since 1988. D’s and F’s total typically less than 10% of all letter grades. Private colleges and universities give, on average, significantly more A’s and B’s combined than public institutions with equal student selectivity. Southern schools grade more harshly than those in other regions, and science and engineering-focused schools grade more stringently than those emphasizing the liberal arts. At schools with modest selectivity, grading is as generous as it was in the mid-1980s at highly selective schools. These prestigious schools have, in turn, continued to ramp up their grades. It is likely that at many selective and highly selective schools, undergraduate GPAs are now so saturated at the high end that they have little use as a motivator of students and as an evaluation tool for graduate and professional schools and employers. -- Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy’s comprehensive 2012 report, “Where A Is Ordinary: The Evolution of American College and University Grading, 1940–2009.” There has been a dramatic increase in average grades at colleges and universities in the United States over the past 50 years. -- -Lehr, Brandon. "Information and Inflation: An Analysis of Grading Behavior" The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, vol. 16, no. 2, 2016, pp. 755-783. https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2015-0138 |
Anonymous
Or your brain matured and you learned how to work smarter rather than harder. At 18-19, studying was really hard for me. At 48, even three years out from a TBI, it was much easier. |