Is a 4.0 a 4.0?

Data10
Sun, 17 Jan 2021 20:40:10 +0000

cgemaj:

Yup… my concern is how is this fair when going up again a student who is putting their grades in the self reported college grade thing and its an A for them. What if my daughter got 93 across the board. So hers would be B B B B versus another student who was A A A A

Small differences in the A/B threshold percentage is not especially meaningful without knowing more about the grading system and grade distribution. For example, I had a freshman chem class in which the average grades on exams were only 30-40%. The highest exam grade in the class of hundreds of outstanding students was often under 90%. The exam grades were low because the exams had question that were on a far higher level than anything in the textbook or problem sets… not impossible, but you had to expand on ideas from classes and textbooks, rather than regurgitate. There were also too many questions for most students to finish within the time limit.

Nobody in the class had an overall >90% average in this example, yet the most common exam grades were still near A. While a 70% might be an A in this example, I believe this >70% = A class was graded more harshly than most other college freshmen chem classes in which >90% = A. The percentage score does not reflect that the exams were far more challenging than other chem classes.

If the admission officer is familiar with your high school and/or views the school profile, he/she can get some idea about what an “A” or “B” grade means at your HS.