The Common Application counselor report asks the counselor to subjectively rank the applicant for academics, extracurriculars, and overall, even if there is no official rank given by the high school.
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Yes, that can be another way there’s some relative standing, but it can be subjective. And many counselors don’t fill that section out.
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3.7 seems high, so it could suggest either grade inflation or a strong student cohort.
How high weighted GPAs can be depends on the weighting method, which every high school can do differently (which is why weighted GPA in chance/match threads is often useless except when a known weighing system for the target colleges is specified, or if the target colleges take weighted GPA at face value).
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I feel like our suburban HS has some amount of grade inflation. Just based on my kids, and my assessment of the skills I see from them (which, admittedly, is not the full story), and the GPA they have. Like, my younger kid feels like a B/B- kid, but their GPA is more A-. I mean, I’m ok with it, because maybe they put more effort in at school than I have seen in general with stuff laying about.
I feel like they put in the effort on “hand in everything, and do make-up/correction stuff as allowed” and that gets them the additional GPA boost. Which is reasonable, since at my job, if something isn’t right, I do it again until it is right, and that’s what school is supposed to be training for, I suppose.
But it does lead to a discrepancy between the GPA and the “one-day high-stakes test” scores. 
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This is the weighting:
But we also have limited honors and AP classes, so hard to say, but seems like the median GPA is in the B range?
This is considered one of the top districts in the area - so much so, that many people move here specifically for the schools, and the cohort tends to be middle to high income and highly educated, with a competitive (to the point of being toxic, imo) school culture. So generally a high achieving cohort.
At the public high school d22 attended, I’d say it’s very mixed. There are classes that are taught at a high level and held to a high standard where few get As, and the significant thing about those classes is that valedictorians almost never take those classes. The school does not weight honors or AP classes, and an A+, A, and A- are all the same 4.0 and so on.
There are also tons of classes where all tests can be corrected, all homework can be turned it late, and the standard is quite low.
It’s the only school I know of where valedictorians frequently stop math after algebra 2, and salutatorians who take honors chemistry and any physics at all are the ones to attend Stanford, Williams, and Columbia. To be clear, most students go to the open-enrollment state university.
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An unweighted GPA of 3.7 would like having 7 A grades for every 3 B grades. It is usually considered an A- average.
Our selective private high school uses a 4.33 system, and no one gets a full 4.33. In fact, it is rare to get over a 4.2, like 0-2 per year, and only a smallish fraction end up above a 4.0, like under 20%.
But then a lot of kids end up between a 3.5 and 4.0, like maybe another 50%. Most of the rest have at least a 3.0, and so maybe 10% end up under a 3.0.
Is this grade inflated? I think by certain definitions, yes. On the other hand, it avoids the problem of a lack of discrimination at the top.
And I don’t think it is a coincidence a feederish HS would want it to work that way.
No modifiers. I looked at my D’s transcript and it gives a gpa by semester and semesters where she had all As or A-s was a 4.0.
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VERY interesting.
My daughter has all A’s and A-'s as well. She gets a 4.0 for an A and a 3.7 for an A- (or 5.0 and 4.7 if the course is weighted for AP or Honors).
This is weighted, however. But I am not sure of the number of weighted classes for the average student, so not sure how different the weighted vs unweighted would be. However, the 3.7 is definitely the median weighted GPA, that’s why I was guessing perhaps closer to a B, with the assumption that most students do take several AP/honors classes (although not exclusively AP/honors classes).
Without knowing the typical number of weighted courses and total courses students take, and what the weighting values are, it is difficult to know what a 3.7 median weighted GPA really means.
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My d went to a Catholic college prep hs. The top 10% had a 4.2+ GPA, 15% of the class scored in the 98th percentile for standardized test scores. Average ACT was a 28. The median gpa was 3.5. 14 NMF out of a class of 205. Huge number of AP scholars +.
So grades were high but they were also a high achieving group of kids. My D worked her tail off. Honors and AP courses got the same weighting.
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And in some HS’s, the grade distributions can be misleading.
A HS with a lot of gatekeeping to AP courses, for example- it wouldn’t be surprising if everyone in AP Physics and BC Calc got A’s. They also all got 5’s on the AP. That’s not grade inflation- that means the HS limits who gets to take these harder courses. If enrollment is capped at a small number because the (highly valued and hard to replace) teachers don’t want a class of25 students with challenging material, you are going to see LOTS of A’s-- doesn’t mean there’s grade inflation.
Some HS’s are happy to have any kid who wants to take a crack at challenging material enroll in the class. You’ll see a much wider distribution there- 2’s and 3’s on the AP exam, lots of B- grades, reflecting that some of the kids in the class haven’t been as rigorously prepared as others.
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This is the same kind of school my kid goes to. He has an UW 4.0 and W 4.33. He is not in the top 5% but he is in the top 9%. The grade inflation plus intense competition is crazy here!
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My daughter graduated with a 4.1 GPA and was in the valedictorian/salutatorian pool (our school invites the top students to apply with resumes, essays, etc so it is not necessarily the top #1 and #2 but from a small pool of top students). She had two Bs and a C on her transcript. So while I do think there is likely some grade inflation, I am not certain it is quite as rampant as it is elsewhere. I mean, where else would a 4.1 weighted (with less than straight As) be a val/sal candidate?
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Our kids’ high school used whole grade metrics.
Yes, those A- grades get rounded up to a 4.0. And those B+ grades (89.49 doesn’t round up to a 90) get rounded down to a 3.0.
It all comes out in the wash.
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It actually doesn’t all come out in the wash.
If a school is trying to identify its top 10% and 20% of the kids have all As because A- grades get rounded up…they can’t identify the top 10% unless they move on to other metrics.
Mathematically, the more “levels” a system has…the more it will allow precise discrimination. The fewer levels…less discrimination.
To use an extreme example, would there be more “ties” with a 1000 point scale or a 10 point scale? 10 point for sure.
A high school where the weighting is light and/or where there are limited numbers of weighted courses to take?
Yes, but also with 2 Bs and a C…So not straight As as is often the case for val/sal candidates, even at schools known for little inflation. Of course, this is just speculation. I have no idea really because I don’t know what grades anyone at my daughter’s got aside from my daughter. I am just looking at the (albeit rather scant) evidence at my disposal, such as highest weighted GPA, median weighted GPA, and the GPA of one of the students in the val/sal pool. Sure, it’s still possible that teachers are handing out As like Halloween candy. Without seeing a sample of transcripts, it’s all just guessing.
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