When I attended my little brother’s high school graduation last year, I noticed something very shocking.  At one point during the ceremony, the principal asked all of the students with a GPA over 4.0 to stand.  I thought this would result in only one or two standing students, but I was wrong.  About 10% of the class stood up, revealing to the crowd that about one out of ten students in a high school graduating class had a GPA better than 4.0, which used to be considered the highest possible GPA one could attain.

Grade inflation does not simply exist in high school.  In college, many students expect A’s simply for doing their homework.  Many law schools have either changed to an entirely pass/fail grading system, or have moved up the median GPA from 2.9 to 3.3.  In all academics, a grade of “C” used to mean average.  Now, it seems like the average grade is a B+ or A.

The result is that it is extremely hard to differentiate high school students who apply for college, and college students who apply for graduate programs.  In the past, admissions programs could examine an applicant’s grades, extracurricular activities, and standardized testing results to evaluate the applicant’s merit.  But now, evaluating grades is a crapshoot [and extracurriculars are as well, as it seems that every motivated student signs up for every extracurricular activity possible].  Since grade inflation is so rampant, all motivated students’ grades are extremely high and extremely close together.  Rather than having some students at GPAs of 4.0, some at 3.5, some at 3.0, and many around 2.0, schools now have a majority of students between 3.5 and 4.5.  If you are an admissions officer, can you really make meaningful differentiations between students with GPAs that differ by only 0.1, especially when you realize that many school systems are quickly racing to the bottom to raise their median grades?  Is a student with a 4.5 GPA really better than a student with a 4.0 GPA?

This forces admissions offices, if they want to have some sort of common factor to compare students with, to use standardized tests to do so.  Thus, the SAT and the LSAT and the GMAT are now the way that students prove their worthiness as academic applicants.  But are these tests really reliable indicators as to the viability of the applicant?  There is no doubt that these tests are helpful in evaluating applicants, but I do not believe that these tests alone can prove the worth of an applicant.  Although these tests can show ability to work well under pressure and to use analytical abilities, etcetera, they cannot capture the information grades used to convey.  Whereas a standardized test is taken at one point in time, where good or bad luck can greatly affect the score on a particular day, grades are acquired over an entire academic year or academic semester.

Grades, in the past, used to require lots of hard work and dedication and, to some extent, an ability to connect with a professor to understand what the professor finds is important in the course.  These factors are extremely important in knowing whether to admit an applicant, because the applicant is going to be taking classes and earning grades in the new school.  One of the most important criteria to me, if I were an admissions officer, would be to know how well the applicant is going to perform in the classes that he or she is applying to take at my school.  As taking these classes is going to require many of the same skills that the applicant used in taking classes in an earlier level of education, I think it is very important to understand the class-taking abilities of all applicants.  However, because of grade inflation, this measurement is quite muddled, and basically forces admissions offices to overly rely on standardized tests.

admissions, college admissions, education, grade inflation, grades