<p>I’m not actually convinced that the grade inflation is the entire story about why a B feels like such a bad grade. I think that in general, as college admissions have grown more and more selective, and drawing from larger crowds, the top colleges tend to only admit the type of people who did extraordinarily well in high school. So many colleges point out they could fill whole classes of people with 4.0’s, and maybe they don’t but many come close. I’m not sure that was the case “back in the day” when it was more a question of social class. In other words I think that colleges these days have a lot more kids who haven’t gotten anything below B+, or A-, or even A in their high school days.</p>