<p>I was wondering how bad grade inflation is at the top private schools. For instance, approximately what percent of students receive an A or A - in a given course? What type of average is needed to graduate Cum Laude?</p>
<p>If grades are inflated, how do colleges make their admission decisions? I’ve heard that at one time private schools would confidentially rate their students for various colleges. Does this still happen?</p>
<p>I don’t think grade inflation is an issue AT ALL. I would say it’s the opposite. There have been many posts of parents/students concerned about students who were straight A students at their private or public day schools getting B’s and C’s at top schools. I would say that for most top schools, an assignment has to be truly superior to earn an A. Back when I was in school, an A was “superior”, a B was “excellent”, a C was “satisfactory”, a D was “unsatisfactory” and an F was simply “failing.”</p>
<p>As for college admissions, most top schools do not rank their students so they send a grade distribution chart or something like it. A student may have gotten a B in AP Calculus but so did 10 others and only one got an A - yet all got a 5 on the exam. Furthermore, colleges are aware of the extreme rigor of top prep schools and understand that a C at say, Exeter, could very well exceed an A at County Public High. This is where normed tests like the SAT and AP come into play. I can’t tell you how many high honor roll seniors at our public school stretch to get a 1700 on the SAT or who get an A in AP English and a 1 or 2 on the exam.</p>
<p>Actually, I can tell you because I just checked the website 
…nearly 80% of seniors are on the honor roll YET the average SAT scores are 534CR, 519M, 548W. For this public school, being average is an honor. THAT, my dear, is grade inflation - pure and simple.</p>
<p>See this thread about grading at BS. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-parents/608317-drop-bs.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/prep-school-parents/608317-drop-bs.html</a></p>
<p>See the last page of this link from Andover as an example. It shows the grade distribution for students’ averages. As you can see, grades are anything BUT inflated.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.andover.edu/Academics/CollegeCounseling/Documents/CCO%20Profile%202008_BW.pdf[/url]”>http://www.andover.edu/Academics/CollegeCounseling/Documents/CCO%20Profile%202008_BW.pdf</a></p>
<p>Andover appears to have an unusual grading system. If we assign A+ to a 6, A to 5.5 and A- to a 5, then over 45% of the students are in the A/A- category. That seems pretty inflated to me.</p>
<p>Another way to look at grade inflation is that it is another name for grade compression. It appears that teachers at Andover seldom assign grades of 0, 1, 2, or 3. Thus, grades seem to be compressed into three categories: 4, 5, and 6. And of those, 6 seems pretty rare.</p>
<p>It’s not really a good idea to draw parallels between an A-F system and the 6 point system. Having used both systems, the expectations are very different. Generally a 6 is a 93-100 and a 5 is an 84-92. Students work very hard to achieve a 5 and must be truly dedicated to receive a 6 average. Almost all schools have grade inflation nation wide and while there may be some at prep schools, I think it is less than the average.</p>
<p>There has been a shift in grades in the last couple years. When I started the average grade was a 4.5, now it has become a 5. I think this shift has occurred as newer teachers are filling open spots. I found that the more veteran teachers, who had gone through schools without grade inflation, had higher expectations than the younger ones. One of my teachers admitted that he rarely gave out 6s, maybe once a year if that. It might look bad on a transcript, but there is real meaning behind that grade. You don’t receive a 6 by accident. Colleges know that the work behind a 5 or 6 at Andover isn’t the same amount of work or effort required to get an honors grade at most public schools. </p>
<p>Another point you may consider is that it’s a good thing that students aren’t being failed (both a 0 and 1 are considered failing). Teachers and advisers are able to step in and successfully help a student who is struggling. Also, if a student is consistently getting 2s or below, they may be asked to leave.</p>
<p>it is way less inflated at exeter than it is in college. i think probably an extremely small number of three or four year graduates from exeter have received all As (no A minuses). on exeter’s 11-point scale, 11 is an A and 10 is an A-, and, typically, the cutoff to be in the top 5% is around 10.4, give or take depending on the year. the cutoff to be in the top 20% is usually around 9.8 (9=B+). </p>
<p>yeah, it is still really inflated when you compare it to the past (my uncle graduated second in his class with a 10.2 in the mid 70s!!), but grade inflation in college is unreal.</p>
<p>What are all these numbers? I go to an IB School so I get grades between 1-7</p>
<p>Doers exeter grade 1-10…is that what im hearing?</p>
<p>Blair has a 6 point scale as well. Two years ago I was told that 10-15% of freshmen have a 5.0 or better and 35-45% have a 4.5 or better. A 5.5 average is truly outstanding. I don’t think anyone has ever had a 6.0 average.There is no weighting of gpa for honors and AP. Like most independent schools, there is no ranking. However, the school profile provided to colleges shows grade distribution by class.</p>
<p>it is not true that teachers seldom give out 3’s, it is considered a bad grade but it is not overly uncommon. It isa lso equivalent to a D+/C-, how many of those are normally seen. A 6 is a 92-100 and 5 is a 84-92, 4 76-84 ect. 4s are very common and that is a C+ or B-.</p>
<p>Tabor’s school wide GPA as reported in its viewbook is 81.8. Anyone know of any others?</p>
<p>Regarding Andover: sugarkim is a current student (or recent graduate? sorry, don’t recall) at Andover, and she has provided useful insight for Andover in the past. As for the comment of i_cantstandthiss, not sure where he goes to school, as he has a very brief posting history.</p>
<p>The other thing you need to consider about few D’s and F’s (in addition to SugarKim’s comments that the students don’t get asked back) is that everyone of these students is a “good student.” You have to meet minimum standards to get accepted - it’s NOT the same population as the local high school. While those standards vary, no school is going to accept a student they think is likely to do poorly academically - no matter how strong hte hook/legacy is.<br>
I don’t think it is at all surprising that the top schools don’t have many D’s and F’s - in fact I would be surprised if the DID have a lot. It does not mean they are inflating grades, it is a relection of the caliber of students they accept.</p>
<p>At Blair, and I imagine at all prep schools, the students who cannot meet the academic expectations are not invited back. I don’t know how low the gpa would be, but I am guessing below a 3.0 (on Blair’s 6.0 scale). </p>
<p>By the way, a very high percentage of Harvard undergrads graduate with honors. In 2002, it was 91%. They were planning to reform this so I don’t know where they are today.</p>
<p>harvard revised its honors policy so that no more than 50% of the class gets honors…4-5% get summa, up to 20% get summa or magna (so there may be a few more magnas if there are less summas), and no more than 50% receive summa, magna, or cum laude.</p>