<p>There are, as usual, more opinions than facts here, which always makes me uncomfortable.</p>
<p>What exactly did GWU fudge? They made estimates, and since the article doesn’t say otherwise, I’d give them the benefit of the doubt and say they made reasonable estimates.</p>
<p>Our local high school provides a grade distribution bar chart, from which it’s possible to make a reasonable estimate of the upper decile GPA cutoff. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with any school taking this approach, and I think that excluding this makes the reported information LESS useful. </p>
<p>And I think USNews’s huffiness about this is self-serving nonsense. They could easily ask colleges to provide two numbers: % top decile among those reporting, and % estimated top decile (with some clear rules about the latter estimates).</p>