Do you ever see colleges compared in ranking or rankings trumpeting GPA? I do not – the published and discussed statistic for the sake of a college’s reputation is ALWAYS test scores. Nobody ever says, “Well the average incoming GPA of college A is 3.8, but the average incoming GPA of college B is 3.7.” That conversation literally never happens.
I am not saying colleges don’t look at GPA for admissions. They do, of course. Some colleges may weight it more than test scores for their own reason. But they don’t really think about it in terms of somehow improving their reputation if they take students with higher GPAs. The premise that the GPA stat matters very much IN THE MARKETPLACE is where the original question goes awry.