Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It has all but confirmed low GPAs are almost idiots.

You’re not an idiot!

Top students have always been the biggest cheaters. Obsession with grades and the home pressure created monsters. It’s not surprising that they are the ones using AI as a cheating source.

Some but not all. What about the great writers in a pen and paper test or the math wizards in a calculus scantron?

bump

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The valedictorian of my high school class went on to U Chicago; he didn't have an unweighted 4.0. Neither, obviously, did the lower-ranked students who attended Duck, UPenn, Swarthmore , Brown and other top schools that I've now forgotten.

Similarly, our valedictorian had a 1500 SAT, the highest in our class.

All of that is table stakes today. My son has a 4.0/1500 and it guarantees him nothing.

But here's the problem: when the top end of the GPA/SAT distribution is capped off through grade inflation, GPA/SAT are no longer meaningful signals for admissions officers and so they have to rely on other factors, extracurriculars, essays, and so forth.

This is SO harmful in my view: first, kids have to spend so much time chasing these activities outside of class that they can't just be kids anymore. And second, it increases their stress levels, because their chances of admission are dictated by subjective factors. We try to tell them that college admissions isn't a judgment on their worth as a human being, but when admissions are decided by all these subjective factors about yourself then to a large degree colleges ARE judging your worth as a human being rather than your achievement as a student.

Get rid of GPA/SAT inflation and life becomes simpler for students.

Anonymous wrote:Grade inflation is making a high GPA less impressive.

1500 encompasses 2% of the students. Nowadays you need go above a cutoff of 1% or 0.5% to distinguish from the others. Caltech uses a bracket system, 1560+ is in the top bracket.

what about 4.0 gpa test optional kids?

Yep

Anonymous wrote:The valedictorian of my high school class went on to U Chicago; he didn't have an unweighted 4.0. Neither, obviously, did the lower-ranked students who attended Duck, UPenn, Swarthmore , Brown and other top schools that I've now forgotten.

Similarly, our valedictorian had a 1500 SAT, the highest in our class.

All of that is table stakes today. My son has a 4.0/1500 and it guarantees him nothing.

But here's the problem: when the top end of the GPA/SAT distribution is capped off through grade inflation, GPA/SAT are no longer meaningful signals for admissions officers and so they have to rely on other factors, extracurriculars, essays, and so forth.

This is SO harmful in my view: first, kids have to spend so much time chasing these activities outside of class that they can't just be kids anymore. And second, it increases their stress levels, because their chances of admission are dictated by subjective factors. We try to tell them that college admissions isn't a judgment on their worth as a human being, but when admissions are decided by all these subjective factors about yourself then to a large degree colleges ARE judging your worth as a human being rather than your achievement as a student.

Get rid of GPA/SAT inflation and life becomes simpler for students.

Anonymous wrote:Grade inflation is making a high GPA less impressive.

1500 encompasses 2% of the students. Nowadays you need go above a cutoff of 1% or 0.5% to distinguish from the others. Caltech uses a bracket system, 1560+ is in the top bracket.

The valedictorian of my high school class went on to U Chicago; he didn't have an unweighted 4.0. Neither, obviously, did the lower-ranked students who attended Duck, UPenn, Swarthmore , Brown and other top schools that I've now forgotten.

Similarly, our valedictorian had a 1500 SAT, the highest in our class.

All of that is table stakes today. My son has a 4.0/1500 and it guarantees him nothing.

But here's the problem: when the top end of the GPA/SAT distribution is capped off through grade inflation, GPA/SAT are no longer meaningful signals for admissions officers and so they have to rely on other factors, extracurriculars, essays, and so forth.

This is SO harmful in my view: first, kids have to spend so much time chasing these activities outside of class that they can't just be kids anymore. And second, it increases their stress levels, because their chances of admission are dictated by subjective factors. We try to tell them that college admissions isn't a judgment on their worth as a human being, but when admissions are decided by all these subjective factors about yourself then to a large degree colleges ARE judging your worth as a human being rather than your achievement as a student.

Get rid of GPA/SAT inflation and life becomes simpler for students.

Anonymous wrote:Grade inflation is making a high GPA less impressive.

Anonymous wrote:Grade inflation is making a high GPA less impressive.

This ^^

Anonymous wrote:It has all but confirmed low GPAs are almost idiots.

You’re not an idiot!

Top students have always been the biggest cheaters. Obsession with grades and the home pressure created monsters. It’s not surprising that they are the ones using AI as a cheating source.

Welcome to the new American educational system where cheating to the top is normalized. Last evening, I was on a call talking about this very issue.

Mass cheating is definitely a problem here in Howard County and especially at my child's high school. There is this particular student who knows how to hack into teacher's upcoming exams, use all types of devices and tools to cheat on assignments and exams. Students have reported cheating, but the school's administrators have turned a blind eye because they are more concern about the school's reputation instead of punishing offenders.

Wait until you all discover how students are cheating on the Digital SAT, academic competitions like AMC, and other academic exams. In addition, there are folks making money on the dark web selling and leaking answers to students. AI helps with GPA, purchasing answers on Discord or other online chat forums helps with academic competitions, and running a device on your personal computer that can surpass the College Board's weak detection blockers helps with the SAT.

Schools and testing organizations need to go back to paper exams.

Here are some discussions and articles about the cheating phenomenon that is currently going on. The cheating situation is much deeper and darker than AI.

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/tutors-sound-the-alarm-on-cheating-on-digital-sat-8292250/

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/28/us/politics/sat-college-board-cheating.html

https://tatler.lakesideschool.org/5784/showcase/scandal-how-various-organizations-leaked-americas-biggest-math-test/

My kid's public made them write all essays in class and on paper. This helped her to be able to write a strong first draft essay of 5 pages+ in a limited time period.

Her college now mostly has essays had written in class. She is given graded work back for editing and refining for a follow up grade. This eliminates the AI option.

I read an article a while ago that suggested more colleges move graded work to things completed in class. This way all work is authentic.

Anonymous wrote:My kids take exams with pencil and paper at their Catholic high school. They wrote essays in class. AP uses blue book so you can’t use AI. Standardized digital ACT/SAT make it so AI can’t be used- screen locks.

This, colleges appreciate strong privates more, with honor code and blue books. My kids do NOT use AI at all, and school is very strict about it.

It has all but confirmed low GPAs are almost idiots.

Anonymous wrote:Whether it be middle, high school or college.

From AI study tools to using ChatGPT for essays.

Study found that AI-generated exam answers scored higher on average than those of real students and were rarely flagged by human markers.

So is the human voice being undetected and are teachers/professors being fooled?

Teachers and professors are not being fooled. The problem is that there is little they can do about and administration do not have their backs.

As a STEM faculty, I made homework 10% of the class and keep projects, if any, not more than 25%, so in-class paper and pencil exams are still worth 75% or more. Even before AI, I saw students who got near 100% in every homework and then 1 to 2 standard deviations below average in exams. It's obvious what happened. They just scoured the web for solution manual, post their homework problems on Chegg and copied answers by those poor folks who solved them for a few USD each, and/or use solutions from previous semesters if the problems hadn't changed. In-class exams have been the way to go for me. Not sure about other majors.

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