[charlesju]

Isn't GPA even easier to game than SATs?

-- Private schools can curve more leniently so its pay to play

-- Rich schools tend to have more AP/Honor courses which inflate weighted GPAs

I went to one of the best public schools in America and it was not uncommon for someone to take 100% AP/Honors and get a 4.5+ GPA.

[dahfizz]

I don't see how taking more advanced classes and scoring well is "gaming" your GPA. You are legitimately taking harder / more in depth classes and performing well. The fact that your GPA is higher as a result seems legitimate.

You can argue about availability of AP classes / funding / etc, but that doesn't detract from the hard work of the AP students. Plenty of rich white kids take hard AP classes and get D's.

[charlesju]

Given 2 equally smart people. The one that has the opportunity to take more AP/Honors will have more opportunity to get a higher GPA.

[danaris]

In some schools, so I understand, AP and Honors courses come with a "bonus" to GPA—so if you get 100% in the course, it may go down on your transcript as a 110%, that sort of thing.

[lostcolony]

It's not gaming, per se, but it definitely is a privilege based thing.

Getting into an advanced class generally means you already know the material that would be in the normal class (taking trig the year everyone else is taking geometry, for instance). How did you get to where you already knew that material? Well, you were either in the advanced class the year before, or, you already learned the material outside of class. How did you already learn the material outside of class? Better education at home. Which is easy to do with a private tutor or stay at home parent; really hard to do with a single parent, or dual income that don't allow for much in education expenses.

And because you are in an advanced class, you basically get a .5-1.0 bump to your GPA (so people are graduating with a 4.5 GPA at some schools), all because you had the extra early resources; you can't compete with just what the school provides.

[BitwiseFool]

Grade inflation is already a serious problem. I can only see this making it even worse.

[lozaning]

UC system, back when I applied only let you weight something like 8 classes, regardless of how many you'd taken.

[dnautics]

in california the top X% of all public high schools are guaranteed a berth at SOME UC, so to some degree intra-school comparisons are less at issue. (parent article is about the UC system as a whole).

[xyzzy21]

Private schools could but in my experience as a private HS grad, they DO NOT. There are other factors that prevent that.

[mattnewton]

This kind of drives home the bigger issue though, that grades between two schools look like comparable numbers but aren't.

[jessaustin]

Some don't. Others definitely do.

[president]

Presumably, that could be solved by lowering the weight for GPA

[Dracophoenix]

Would the school you went to be TJHSST?

[raunak]

Well, I graduated from TJ this year (2021) and it wasn’t very common for people to have a 4.5+. Yes, some, but not the average by any stretch - average was probably a 4.2, or a 4.3.