<p>My mom got a 4.0 and went to a school not even comparable to a IVY league school
So it seems because a 4.0 is harder to get now it is ALMOST a key a ivy league</p>
<p>Plus she said they never used to offer: Calculus, Statistics, Physics, and hard classes like that</p>
<p>Is a 4.0 harder to get now?</p>
<p>I’d honestly think that getting a 4.0 is easier now than in the 80s.</p>
<p>But to be honest I don’t understand your first two sentences. .</p>
<p>No.</p>
<p>Had a H.S. Class of 500, and one 4.0</p>
<p>There were no weighted GPA’s.</p>
<p>I had several courses of biology and many other ologys and otanys, physics, 3 semesters of Chemistry, 4 years of accelerated math and with one semester of calculus, a full year of Physics, 4 yeras of band, 4 years foreign language.</p>
<p>What is really different: The focus of the schools.</p>
<p>In the “old” days, high schools offered good vocational programs as well. You could come out as a certified auto tech, hair stylist, spend 12 hours per week in a hospital environment for H.S. Credit. There were many different avenues.</p>
<p>Now, one size must fit all which is very sad as we are all human beings, not of one size and certainly not all interested in the same thing.</p>
<p>Never. IMO, it was never easier. At that time it was much more harder. </p>
<p>Now a days, more people are going to good colleges because of endowment. Yes, can you imagine why some people who dropped out? Money. Today a lot of people go to top universities because of financial aid.
And for this, new people are inventing things.</p>
<p>Questions from 80s will seem easier to all because we have learned newer things.</p>
<p>I went to school in the 80s. We didn’t have weighted GPAs either. The SAT scores were also recalculated so the same score from the 80s is higher. Now fewer people went to college, and most didn’t apply to the amount of schools. We may not have had statistics, but we had welding, auto mechanics, office administration, etc</p>
<p>I had a school in the sticks, but we did have Physics. In my area the math went up to Pre-calculus. I will tell you that when I went to school the average grade was a C. That meant average. Grade inflation has crept up over the years. </p>
<p>While most of us didn’t have AP courses, the classes that I had prepared me for college. We had far fewer remedial classes in college. It is amazing how many A students end up in remedial classes now.</p>
<p>Studying was far harder although the volume of material to learn is greater today.</p>
<p>Imagine doing everything you have to do with a typewriter, no cell phones, no Internet so no google or Wikipedia. Imagine going to the library doing the Dewey decimal thing and looking up historical facts on microfiche then having to type an error free 20 page paper without a backspace, undo or escape button and no spell check or word counter. Ugh.</p>
<p>I graduated in 1983 and have two high schoolers now, and I would say it was harder then. We did not have classes designated as AP or honors, so no extra points, even though many of the classes were of that caliber. Very few people had 4.0 GPAs at my school, and still went onto excellent colleges. And of those that went to community college, there were far fewer needing remediation in math or English (even with “good” grades in high school). And as was already mentioned, imagine doing all your homework at the library, looking up answers in encyclopedias, taking copious notes and coming home to type (one draft!) on your typewriter.</p>
<p>I guess I’d summarize what I was saying by stating my belief that it took a lot more discipline to get a 4.0 back in my day. A very smart student wasn’t going to cut if he was a little lazy or had sloppy habits.</p>
<p>I think today, there is so much to learn, especially at a competitive school, that innate intelligence plays a greater role and technology makes us so much more productive that a slightly lazy student or one with sloppy study habits can still knock out a 4.0.</p>
<p>The caveats are slightly lazy and competitive school.</p>
<p>Terrible laziness will hurt you no matter how intelligent.</p>
<p>I see tons of schools churning out honor students that score 1300 on the SATs. It’s a crime leaving parents and students wondering what happened. I tell them their school is crap and completely failed them and they didn’t even know it.</p>
<p>Question is: Does it matter now?
Honestly, I don’t think we should give much thought to this matter. Since the study environment nowadays differs greatly from that in the 80s, I don’t see much point in comparing the two generations which had like a 3-decade gap.
Anyway, in my opinion, I reckon that getting a 4.0 GPA now is far easier than in the 80s (during which my parents had to study while working to support their family)</p>
<p>I went to high school in the 70’s. My son is graduating high school on Friday.</p>
<p>Sorry, but his course load is a joke. AP of today was standard “Regents” (we live in NY) back then. I’m sure that’s why there is a move to IB… it’s an effort to regain lost rigor.</p>
<p>I was “Track 1” (out of 3) when I was going to school. They started calling it “AP”, “Regents”, and “School Group” when I was halfway through High School.</p>
<p>In a good school district on Long Island, out of a graduating class of nearly one thousand, we were only two classes of about 30 students that were “AP”. Now it seems EVERYONE is AP.</p>
<p>Which reminds me that class sizes were much bigger. We had 30-32 kids in a class and we all had to learn at a given pace, make at least a 90 average, or face being thrown down to “Regents”. Now you have half that number and the kids can get grades in the 80’s and still stay in AP. Even if they get in the 70’s there is just “talk” about changing classes. G-d forbid you harm the ego of the child. We would have been tossed out on our ear with an 89 and nobody would bother to call our parents. They’d get a note in the mail about our failure. :-/</p>
<p>Oh yeah… and there were no calculators allowed. The calculators sucked back then anyway. We used slide rules.</p>
<p>Easier back than to make grades… you wish!</p>
<p>@PKMGSolesdad,</p>
<p>Yes it does matter. GPA’s are so inflated today. What does it say about the quality of education when high GPA kids can’t pass the state’s highschool exit exam?</p>
<p>Doesn’t anyone think it depends on the hs? Then and now? I transferred at the beginning of 11th. What constituted an A at the former, was chicken scratch at the second school, which was one of the top 2 in the country, at the time. We had APs, we had some kids who went off to vocational in the afternoons. And, this is decades ago.</p>
<p>What was different, in my experience, was that rigor (in my 2nd hs) was about intellectual gusto, the stretch. Not who’s a fraction of a point ahead of another.</p>
<p>
I’m not sure I follow your logic. Your mom got a 4.0 and didn’t go to an ivy league, but now a 4.0 is “almost a key a ivy league”, therefore a 4.0 is harder to get now than in the past? Getting a 4.0 is not a requirement for being accepted to the ivy league now, nor was it in the past. I had a ~3.4/3.5 GPA and was accepted to 4 out of the 5 ivy + SM schools to which I applied. My mom was valedictorian with a 4.0 and went a smaller LAC. I doubt that she applied to any ivies. This information doesn’t tell us anything about the relative difficulties of getting high grades at the two HSs. </p>
<p>Overall grades are no doubt higher now, with grade inflation. I’ve heard stories of as many as 100+ students being tied for valedictorian because so many students had all As in every class for all HS years. I’ve never heard of schools like that in the past. This also doesn’t mean all schools in the 80s had more rigorous grading. One of the reasons my mom’s GPA was a 4.0 was because she grew up in a small rural/farming area where virtually none of the graduating class went on to a 4-year college. There were no AP classes, or even advanced classes like calculus. Hardly anyone studied or made much effort. The curve was quite easy, even though the average HS GPA was quite low. Far more students go to 4-year college now than in the past. There are more college level courses and a larger percentage of students are making an effort, so there are also plenty of HSs where it is difficult to maintain a high GPA. While there are many exceptions, I’d expect overall it’s easier to get As now than decades in the past.</p>
<p>These days, it may seem like “everyone” takes AP courses, because there are so many of them. But many of the newer ones are “AP lite” courses, where a year long course is equivalent to a semester-long college course, and not a very difficult one at that (e.g. psychology, statistics, environmental science, human geography).</p>
<p>Also, back when I was in high school, calculus was only offered in BC form, taught in one year. These days, it seems that high schools commonly split calculus into two years, which makes no sense, since student who reach calculus as juniors should be the top students in math who can handle a full speed calculus course (when I was in high school, such students were rare, and typically found the course to be an easy A and the test to be an easy 5).</p>
<p>I don’t really have anything to say because I don’t know anyone who went to high school in the 80s, but everyone’s parents are SO YOUNG here. If you guys want to know my parents’ views on what school was like in the 60s though…</p>
<p>Then as now it just depends on the school. What are we comparing? </p>
<p>I think there are way more classes in advanced math and science then there were generally offered then. Only the few, most advanced students took calculus. My school had very little money, so we had no labs, but there are probably schools today that have the same problem.</p>
<p>I agree that schools matter but from my experience, I think that there was less disparity between schools than there is today.</p>
<p>I don’t doubt that there were elite private schools like there are today but public schools were also pretty standard and adults didn’t have to be as concerned about what side of the street there house was on as they do today.</p>
<p>Predominantly black schools provided a much better education than they do today. Social promotion was big so some kids fell through the crack but now whole schools full of kids fall through the cracks. Our schools call kids honor students that can’t read or do math well at all. There was no emphasis on self esteem.</p>
<p>I think kids today have so many more challenges. I come across so many young people that are just broken. Too many kids are raised in broken homes, been hurt in the home physically or sexually, exposed to so much bad stuff at younger ages, grow up in an economy with no stability, no hope and a nation in perpetual war with an immense national debt for them to pay. Our kids are inheriting an America at its lowest point in history. Not because the challenges are worse than they’ve ever been but because the hopelessness and irreversible decline are worse than they’ve ever been.</p>
<p>We really shouldn’t compare. I pray for kids. So young and talented and so confused, miseducated and manipulated.</p>
<p>For American high schools overall, I’d say it is technically easier to get a 4.0 nowadays rather than in the 80s. For one, it seems that Cs and Bs were more common and less treated as a plague on one’s transcript, heck, even students that were not even in the top quartile of my school panicked over the dreaded C grade. Plus, there is a mountain-load of evidence that more and more students graduate with higher GPAs, but end up having low standardized test scores and take remedial courses in college.
<a href=“http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/issues.pdf[/url]”>http://www.act.org/research/policymakers/pdf/issues.pdf</a>
[Straight</a> A?s ? but still not ready for college |](<a href=“http://collegetrackservices.com/resources/straight-as-but-still-not-ready-for-college/]Straight”>http://collegetrackservices.com/resources/straight-as-but-still-not-ready-for-college/)</p>
<p>And, unfortunately, I saw a lot of this aforementioned test score/grade dissonance by first hand. I know a girl who had a GPA above 4.5, yet only got straight 3s on her APs. And another one who had a GPA of about 5.0, and couldn’t manage to score above a 1900 on her SAT. Or another one who got a 98 in her AP Lang. class and failed the exam. So yeah, high grades nowadays are much more common and have less meaning than what they were in the 80s.</p>