<p>My college GPA was MUCH lower than my high school GPA. (I was salutatorian, National Merit Finalist, and AP Scholar with Honor.) My cumulative GPA at UIUC was 4.13 (3.13 on the conventional 4-point scale). In retrospect, I’m surprised I managed to earn my BSEE at all. My cumulative GPA at GMU (where I earned my MSEE in 2004) was 3.03. Given my shoddy attitude as an undergraduate, I’m surprised that I didn’t do much worse. However, I am proud of my record at GMU - I graduated in spite of several things I had going against me, such as specializing in a specialty where I had a weak background and working on EXTREMELY ambitious and time-consuming projects (which I didn’t have to do to graduate, but degrees aren’t a magical talisman that provide competence).</p>
<p>Yet there are some people who manage to earn higher GPAs in college than in high school. How? Wouldn’t the inferior high school preparation sabotage one’s college career?</p>
<p>I think there are many reasons you could have a higher GPA in college.
Maturity - I remember my daughter saying after her first college quarter, that she never realized how hard college would be and how hard she could work. In HS, I thought she was working fairly hard, but she told us later that it wasn’t until college that she realized what that meant. </p>
<p>Another reason could be taking classes that truly interest you. At my son’s HS, he has two classes a day that he enjoys, JAVA and Mass Media. 90% of his HS classes all four years were ones that he had to take, not chose to take.</p>
<p>Financial motivation - Most renewable scholarships are tied to a certain gpa. I know that was in the back of my daughters head her freshman year at college.</p>
<p>my college gpa was much better than high school. in college, I actually knew what I was doing, was interested in the curriculum, and most of all I was paying for it and wasn’t about to waste my money on a B. I have to say the students that were there and parents were paying didn’t care if they failed or did poorly. in high school I had to take biology, and learn the different types of fishes in our region. That is truly helping me in my nursing career (note the sarcasm).</p>
<p>My college GPA was much better than my high school GPA. Thinking about this in retrospect, I believe the reasons are as follows:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Maturity: I didn’t give in to peer pressure in college. Partying wasn’t on my agenda. I also had a girl friend,which helped out a lot for me.</p></li>
<li><p>Better study habits: In high school, I depended on the teacher’s notes for the most part. In college, I not only had to read the book,but I actually outlined all the courses meticulously.</p></li>
<li><p>Courses more akin to abilities and desires: In high school, I had to take a wide variety of courses that I really didn’t like such as Spanish. YUCH!
In college, only freshmen year, for the most part, has required courses that I didn’t particularly like. Thus, there are 3 years of courses that kids want to take.</p></li>
<li><p>College inspired my desire to learn: I really started to enjoy learning in college; perhaps this was part of the maturation process. Since I enjoyed learning more, I had a much better attitude about taking courses unrelated to my major.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I’m also in the college better than HS group.</p>
<p>Didn’t apply myself in HS. Got "B"s and was fine with that. </p>
<p>After freshman year in college, my parents informed me there was no money for me to continue. I worked for a year; that was all it took for me to truly realize the value of a college education. Transferred to my state flagship, focused, worked hard and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.</p>
<p>Takes some of us longer than others to grow up. I have a brother in law in his fifties who still hasn’t…</p>
<p>I did MUCH better in college than HS, went from a 2.9 to a 3.54…</p>
<p>I believe the main reason for my transformation was best stated by taxguy and amith1. I got to study material I actually wanted to study and there wasn’t peer pressure to do ‘poorly’ as there was in high school. </p>
<p>As to the following question:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I find that accusation very offensive. Just because I had a relatively low GPA in high school is in no reflection as to my preparation for college. It was very difficult to get A’s at my high school and there was no grade inflation as I’m seeing all too frequently on this board. </p>
<p>Successful preparation for college I believe is based more on how well your high school prepares students for college. Certain skills such as encouraging good note-taking skills and having solid writing/reading comprehension skills will get you further in the long run than having a 4.0 GPA at a sup-par high school where students aren’t adequately taught such skills. </p>
<p>I also believe that a student’s personality can either make or break them in a college setting. I wasn’t afraid to ask questions in class, no matter how ‘stupid’ I thought they made me sound. Actually, many students had the same questions as I had, but they didn’t have the courage to actually raise their hands to ask their questions. This also has a lot to do with the maturity factor…</p>
<p>One last factor I’m going to mention occurs on more of a case-by-case basis, which is burn-out. I’ve seen a lot of my peers from high school who had much higher GPAs than myself and took much more challenging classes burn-out in college. They had more than adequate preparation for college, however, they worked so hard to do well in high school that when they get to college they don’t have the energy to keep up that level of expectation for another 4+ years.</p>
<p>My relative GPA at a prestige LAC was much, much higher than it was in my school. Work was easier, much less intense, and because I wasn’t in classrooms 6 hours a day, traveling 3 hours a day, and didn’t have two hours of mindless homework, it was (for me) much more conducive for learning.</p>
<p>It all depends on the high school, the college, and the student. At my son’s very competitive private high school, it is quite difficult to get an A. The average student has about a 3.0 average, but that average student also has about a 1400 (2100) SAT, and gets into a top-ranked college (top 20 LAC or Nat;l University). Many of those top-ranked colleges have rampant grade inflation, unlike the high school. That’s why, (and I know, the PC cops will get annoyed), SATs have consistently been better predictors of first-year grades than high school GPAs have been; because there’s so much variation among schools in grading practices, grade distribution, quality of the student body, etc.<br>
So, it is not unusual for a valedictorian or other superstar from a poorly-performing urban or rural high school to struggle with grades in college, or for a B student from a highly competitive high school (Thomas Jefferson in Va., Stuyvesant, Roxbury Latin, St. Alban’s, etc.) to find that college is much less demanding (or at least more generous with grades) than high school. Again, it all depends…</p>
<p>“So, it is not unusual for a valedictorian or other superstar from a poorly-performing urban or rural high school to struggle with grades in college, or for a B student from a highly competitive high school (Thomas Jefferson in Va., Stuyvesant, Roxbury Latin, St. Alban’s, etc.) to find that college is much less demanding (or at least more generous with grades) than high school.”</p>
<p>I went to Stuy - and there is no question in my mind, absolutely none, that the top 125 kids at Stuy (I was 123rd), were, on the whole, just plain smarter than the same cohort at my alma mater (Williams), and my friends at Harvard found the same. We were not, however, as well drilled in our writing skills, definitely not in our speaking and presentation skills, our worldviews were certainly much narrower, and our general knowledge of the world more circumscribed. Those of us who attended found that it usually took about a year to gain the urbane sophistication to compete really effectively (the math and science kids being somewhat an exception). </p>
<p>But most Stuy kids just didn’t get the opportunity to attend these schools to begin with, and it made some of the classrooms at City College very exciting places to be.</p>
<p>I think what you’re saying is that those smart NY public-school kids may be diamonds in the rough, but they clean up pretty well, pretty quickly. I noticed the same thing at my wife’s 10th reunion of her Bronx Science class. In the yearbook, these kids had looked, shall we say, a bit unpolished. But by the time the 10th reunion rolled around, they were a pretty urbane group; it might have been difficult to tell many of them from a typical NY prep school graduate (not Andover, perhaps, but at least Horace Mann!)
Today, as compared to 30 years ago, these schools have a different demographic many more children of Asian and Russian immigrants; hardly any 2nd/3rd gen Jews. But the principle still remains the same - these are kids who are going places. Isn’t upward mobility great!</p>
<p>The “better grades in college” issue is related, but really is a different issue.</p>
<p>As a current high school senior, I have to say that I’m pretty sure that even if my grades sink, my work ethic will be better in college. I’m a procrastinator, which will hurt me, but I also really like to learn. I could be wrong and I know that it’s going to be a lot of work, but I have the feeling that I’m going to thrive in college in a lot of ways. </p>
<p>Since I’m so busy with ECs etc, I tend to ignore easy, busywork assignments that don’t actually teach me anything, which tends to drag my grades down even though I do well on tests. In challenging classes with meaningful, interesting, and difficult assignments, however, I put in a lot of effort and do well. I rise to a challenge…and sink when there isn’t one.</p>
<p>Plus, as others have said, I’m paying for this education…high school was free.</p>
<p>D’s friend is an absolutely brilliant young man, and always has been. Soaked up material without doing any work. He hated the restrictions and requirements for graduation, so didn’t turn in his work. Yet, he knew the material, but took so many zeroes that we thought he wouldn’t graduate from HS. Now, in college, he has really high grades. He gets to choose his classes and times, and actually is interested in the material, so he does his work. There are many students like him. More academic freedom lets them blossom.</p>
<p>So much depends on the individual & the HS & college environments. At my son’s HS, it’s really competitive, so many kids who are “near the middle of the class” (& NMFs) really shine wherever they go to college too. Personally, I got about the same GPA in HS & college, pretty close to a 4.0, unweighted.
The kids who have come back from college during breaks to speak with our HS have said that the HS prepares them very well for whatever college they choose to attend, including Harvard, USC, Emory, UCs, USC, & many others. I expect they are still getting top grades to keep their merit scholarships for the many who have received them.</p>
<p>I’ve never really thought about relative GPAs, but I guess my college GPA was higher than my HS GPA, and graduate school’s GPA was even higher. In my case, that was because I got to dump the subjects I did poorly in (because I didn’t like them much) and choose what I wanted to study.</p>