<story><title>Grade inflation: What goes up must come down</title><url>https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/10/3/barton-grade-inflation/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tylergetsay</author><text>This also applies to high school in my experience. I had a lower GPA but took AP classes, my friends who took easy classes got into better schools.</text></item><item><author>gnicholas</author><text>In undergrad, the professor who taught intermediate microeconomics told us about how law and business school admissions officers knew how tough his course was (it was the weeder course), and that doing well would be a feather in our cap. I made the mistake of believing him. The savvy students took intermediate micro at nearby schools and transferred the credit along with a higher grade.&lt;p&gt;Graduate schools will look at rec letters and take the professor&amp;#x27;s praise into account, but they haven’t the slightest notion of whether a class you took is hard or not. Students who want to optimize their future prospects know this, and select their courses accordingly. Oh, and employers know&amp;#x2F;care even less than graduate schools.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>grogenaut</author><text>I went to a good uni in the same city as my high school. The admissions officers told me they knew my (mediocre) grades (all tough classes) were fine cause they were familiar with my high school and this helped me get in with lower than average grades. My test scores were generally good as well. This was repeated by the other two schools. Why did I get to talk to the admissions officers? I played sports. Even D3 schools had a former admissions officer or dedicated one who gave the coaches reads on everyone pre-admission. I got these reads from them.&lt;p&gt;Even Carnegie was familiar with my highschool (5 states away from MO), I just didn&amp;#x27;t get in there as I didn&amp;#x27;t have time to re-take the basic SAT Math as I had forgotten more geometry from freshman year than I needed to get to their high bar. I did nail the SAT2 math though.  Many schools took that or the ACT which I did better on.&lt;p&gt;I think it depends on the size of your college&amp;#x2F;uni and how many other kids from your school go there.&lt;p&gt;I do remember being pissed watching one of my friends go up and get national honor society honors for their senior year because they finally passed their third try at freshman Algebra and had really high marks overall their senior year, where I was pulling a class high 89% in Stats but my gpa was not high enough.&lt;p&gt;Seems to have worked out going to engineering though which definitely did not grade inflate when I was there.</text></comment>
<story><title>Grade inflation: What goes up must come down</title><url>https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/10/3/barton-grade-inflation/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tylergetsay</author><text>This also applies to high school in my experience. I had a lower GPA but took AP classes, my friends who took easy classes got into better schools.</text></item><item><author>gnicholas</author><text>In undergrad, the professor who taught intermediate microeconomics told us about how law and business school admissions officers knew how tough his course was (it was the weeder course), and that doing well would be a feather in our cap. I made the mistake of believing him. The savvy students took intermediate micro at nearby schools and transferred the credit along with a higher grade.&lt;p&gt;Graduate schools will look at rec letters and take the professor&amp;#x27;s praise into account, but they haven’t the slightest notion of whether a class you took is hard or not. Students who want to optimize their future prospects know this, and select their courses accordingly. Oh, and employers know&amp;#x2F;care even less than graduate schools.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>mathattack</author><text>Same though I’d say that the group who optimized for grades over challenging themselves in high school didn’t fare so well.  Same in college actually.  I don’t have much law school data but it seems like the folks afraid of competition when they’re young don’t grow into it when they get older.</text></comment>