<p>Sorry, just wanted to add some thoughts to my previous post:</p>
<p>Also, the whole “cheating the system” thing sucks…I don’t know how prevalent it is in our school, though. And I thought this article was pretty interesting:
[Featured</a> Article](<a href=“http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/0009/grades_1.htm]Featured”>http://www.ntlf.com/html/pi/0009/grades_1.htm)</p>
<p>For example, I got a B on last semester’s math final and got an A instead of an A+ as a final grade, but I might as well have gotten a 91% in the class even after working my butt off because anything from a 91% to a 97% registers the same way in the GPA system. And if someone got an 89% and someone else got a 91% in a class, there’s almost a 17% difference in that grade’s contribution to the GPA, if I’m calculating it right (which I’m probably not, lol). Our school’s GPAs are on a 12-point scale like this:</p>
<p>A+: 12 points
A: 11 points
A-: 10 points
B+: 9 points
B: 8 points
etc.</p>
<p>So the first person gets an 11/12 and the second gets a 9/12, but they only had a 2% difference in the class, which, again, (I think) was reflected as a 17% difference! I’d say that calculating GPAs this way (and wouldn’t it just be easier to average up each kid’s class numerical percentages, anyway?) probably accounts for a lot of discrepancy in who “should be” valedictorian vs. who is (maybe more so than cheating the system).</p>