The phrase “grade inflation” strongly suggests that the grades received are not earned or deserved. Given the extraordinary emphasis put on grades by a lot of over-achieving students and families, I’m not sure this is always the case with top students. For example, if the 20 kids in your child’s school mastered the material to an extremely high level and the difference in performance between this group is negligible, then wouldn’t deflating some of their grades to represent some desired grade spread be artificial and arbitrary? IMO high school should be more about mastery of the material than sorting the students.
But whatever we call it, we seem to have a bunching at the top for many students who all have performed about the same, grade-wise. I think top colleges are aware of this, and it is why I don’t think that being in the top 3-5% will be viewed that much differently than being top 6%. Other factors will likely carry the day.
I am talking about watered down tests, test re-takes and “extra credit” for my kids’ ok public HS. In the AP classes, we see kids getting 2/3’s even though they got A’s. I can see where the top 20 or more of the top students at public or private feeder could have all mastered the material, but that is why those schools place a high portion of students in selective colleges.
Did you really see this, in verifiable form? That’s pretty surprising. My kids’ school provided much more information than most but the idea of spreading around identifiable students grades in individual classes vs. their AP scores in those classes? Those were the subject of gossip and stories, but rarely reliable information.
Didn’t have verifiable information by student by grade. Did have conversations with a number of AP teachers who generally told me how the class did overall when we talked about our kids specifically in teacher/parent conferences. Original post poorly drafted. Edited now.
There is a small, all female, Catholic high school here. A few years ago, all 25 in the class got ‘5’ on the Calc B/C test. Did all get A’s in the class? I don’t know.
The school usually only has about 100 in the graduating class, which means all 25 weren’t even in the top 10. I doubt there are many C’s given out at the school. Everyone has great grades. Not everyone gets to go to Harvard (or in this case, Georgetown or Notre Dame).
I think you can partly assess this from school profiles, average GPAs vs the AP score distribution (especially at competitive schools where most kids take at least some APs). I know at my kid’s school, there appears to have been at least some grade inflation judging by APs. In D19’s year, average GPA was 3.55 with 39% of APs a 4 and 47% a 5 (100% pass rate), vs latest with 3.71 average GPA, 94% pass rate for APs with 36% a 4 and 40% a 5. Average ACT is up from 29 to 30 but that may reflect test optional (prior sat was old scale but I assume same trend).
For context though, last year 282 out of 309 seniors took at least one AP. In the prior comparison it was 219 out of 320 students.
I expect a key reason why rank has generally become less important in college admissions because fewer HSs rank students. Grade inflation may contribute to why fewer HSs choose to rank students, as well as changes in both societal and college expectations. It’s a cycle – fewer HSs send rank, which contributes to colleges as a whole placing less weight on rank. Specific numbers are below, from the NACAC report.
% of Colleges Saying Class Rank Has “Considerable Importance” in Admission Decisions
1993 – 42%
2000 – 34%
2004 – 28%
2010 – 22%
2014 – 18%
2018 – 9%
2023 – 5%
The older NACAC reports delved in to which high schools ranked students. It was primarily public HSs that ranked students, particularly large and lower SES public HSs where most students do not attend a 4-year college. For example, the 2004 report mentions 85% of public HSs ranked students, but only 18% of private HSs ranked students. At HSs with a good portion of class being composed of high achieving students, submitting class rank to colleges generally hurts more students than it helps, and HSs recognize this.
From the college’s perspective, in addition to class rank not being available for a large portion of applicants (I realize they can often figure out approximate rank when not available), another limitation is inconsistent ranking systems at different HSs. For example, the HS I attended ranked students by unweighted GPA, without consideration of honors/AP/… , so students can avoid AP classes to improve class rank. Some high schools go to the other extreme and give as high as an extra +1 letter grade for honors and +2 letter grades for AP, making class rank largely a function of how many AP classes the student takes. As has been discussed, the college also needs to consider the strength of the student body. A top 5% rank means different things at a HS where most students are high achieving and a HS where only a small minority of students are high achieving.
I expect the end result is typical highly selective colleges that use a holistic admission system don’t use a simple rank threshold as has been discussed in this thread. They may use rank to add context to the holistic review of transcript, but I expect are unlikely to say you need a top 1% rank to be admitted.
Honestly your school sounds a lot like my school! My school has some grade inflation & on top of that, I know multiple people taking 11-12 APs each year during sophomore & junior year to keep up with the top of the class. Even a single B drops your rank by around two percent, and grade inflation is crazy high so I have no idea how I’m going to catch up.
That’s actually not unusual given that close to 50% of students get a 5 in AP Calc BC as it is one of the easiest AP tests. I am not sure why they make the AP Calc test so easy. I am familiar with a public school where the teacher all but guaranteed a 5 as long as the kids managed to do well in the advanced math track to get into the AP Calc BC class.
Yes, I am very familiar with many cases where students scored 2s and 3s in the class and yet got A’s in the course. It’s rampant. The students take tests multiple times until the teacher is happy with the average. For students who still don’t manage to cough up a good enough grade after two more attempts at the test, they can always ask for extra work if they want it. Another option is to not take the AP course and instead get college credit if the course is dual credit. I know students specifically who did this and got an A in their college work course but would have been hard-pressed to pass the AP exam and certainly would not have scored a 4 or a 5 on the AP Statistics test.
And my daughter’s Spanish teacher guaranteed her an A in Spanish to take AP Spanish, even if she didn’t get a 5 on the AP test, which she didn’t, but the grades were already out before the scores were out. Spanish teacher just wanted her to take the final year of Spanish. Daughter got really sick in the spring of Senior year and had to really work to bring grades back up in several classes, and she took the Spanish teacher up on that guarantee.
I guess my point was even if everyone in the Calc B/C class gets a 5 on the exam, will they all get A’s in the class (what about attendance, homework points, misbehavior?) and will the all be in the top 10% of the class? In the example I gave of 25 in the class getting 5s on the AP test, but only 100 in the graduating class, all 25 can’t be in the top 10% of the graduating class. Math! Can’t get around it.
That’s not the primary reason why more students get 5’s on Calc BC than other tests. The primary reason is instead self-selection. For example, 20% of students get 5’s on Calc AB, which is more in line with most other APs. The issue is not that that the AB calc test is harder than BC. It’s that students who take BC instead of AB are more likely to be high achieving students, and as such have a higher score distribution. It’s a similar idea to why there are triple the 5’s on Physics C (calculus based) as on Physics 1 (algebra based). Or why there are far more 5’s on CS A than on CS Principles.
Their class rank would not be based on only one AP course and one AP test. It’s very possible they all got A’s in the class as I think that’s basically true for the guy who guaranteed a 5 though maybe some got an A-. In any case, there are harder AP tests and I doubt all 25 students would be getting a 5 on each and every one of the ones they took so why would they all be in the top 10%? It’s like saying 25 kids got an A in some course which happens frequently ie. health but not all are in the top 10%. Sure but why would you expect them to be when one might have gotten a B in chem and another got a B in history etc while some got straight A’s in all their courses.
I never said it was the only reason however its relative ease does seem to account for the majority of the reason based on the numbers.
Here’s an example. AP Chemistry has the following breakdown of scores:
students taking the test in 2023: 139,448
5 - 15%
4 - 27%
3 - 33%
2 - 17%
1 - 8%
Pass rate - 75%
Mean - 3.26
AP Calc BC 2023:
students taking the test in 2023: 135,458
5 - 42%
4 - 16%
3 - 20%
2 - 16%
1 - 6%
Pass rate: 78%
mean - 3.75
The number of students taking these tests are very similar and I would hazard to guess that there is a lot of overlap of students that take both tests and yet Calc BC has almost triple the number of 5’s. You might say that AP Chem is not self selection except that students often take a chemistry before AP Chem and it’s often a lot of the same students taking both these AP tests. So no, a 5 in AP Calc BC is significantly easier to achieve than other AP STEM courses. I don’t actually consider AP Computer Science Principles to count in this group of AP tests.
Chemistry does not have a more/less rigorous version – there is only one chemistry course, hence there is less of a split of one course for high achieving and one course for not as high achieving. In contrast, calculus does have a more/less rigorous version – the fast paced BC and the relatively slow based AB. The higher achieving students tend to take BC and the not as high achieving students tend to take AB. The relative score distributions of these 2 courses in the 2023 year you used in your example, is below.
Calc AB – 22% get 5, 58% get 3+ (274k test takers)
Calc BC – 43% get 5, 78% get 3+ (135k test takers)
Why do you think the relatively small minority who took BC have a much higher score distribution than the majority who took AB? Do you think the BC test is easier than AB?
Maybe it’s easier to find good calculus teachers compared to chemistry teachers? We’re lucky to have great AP Chem teachers at our HS, so by the time the kids take the test they think it seems “easy” and it’s very common for kids to get 5… and they didn’t take chemistry beforehand (kids get a choice of AP or regular chemistry). But I know that the kids and teachers work hard over the course of the year in that class.