<p>who came up with this and why?..Why not base everything out of 100(for both high school and colleges). A 93 is a 93, nothing ambiguous about it. A student who gets a 93(A in many schools) gets a 4.0…same as if he had gotten a 100. That’s 8 points with the same 4.0 result…crazy. Go the other way 8 points (85-92) and you jump across 3 different GPA’s…a 3.0(B), 3.33(B+) and 3.66(A-). Does that make sense? There is no incentive from getting the minimal 93 to the A+ range…GPA still 4.0.</p>
<p>Edit:…Think about this…the student that gets all 93’s has a perfect 4.0, same as the student that got all 100’s. The 100 student scored 7 points higher than the 93 student, but both look the same on paper…4.0. Compare that to the student who scores 7 points lower than the 93 student, an 86 or 3.0 GPA. It makes too much sense to just base everything out of 100.</p>
<p>I completely agree. The 4.0 scale rips people off from the grades they deserve. It’s not fair when someone brags about their 89.5 counting as an A-, while you had a 92.49. But I guess if you had a 92.5, the person with a 96.49 could say the same about you.</p>
<p>And then people massively inflate the GPA’s. Some schools have 100-93 is an A, others have 100-90 is an A. And with the 4.0 scale, it’s so easy to add on credits for AP classes or honors and unfairly inflate your grade. At my school, honors classes get no extra weight when they are factored into your GPA. So the Honors U.S. history class gets a 70-question test with no bonus while the regular class has a 50-question test with a bonus, and they are getting the same credit for the “same” work. AP classes only get .25 credits. AP classes definitely drag your grade down more than a fraction of a letter grade; we should be getting 1 extra point.</p>
<p>They used the 4.0 scale as a quantitative measurement of a categorical value. But why should we translate our number grades into letters and then back into numbers? 100-point system all the way!</p>
<p>My school doesn’t use the GPA scale when calculating our averages. Although I agree with this policy, converting my average to GPA has been quite annoying due to the myriad of scales present. Honestly, whats the point?</p>
<p>I think the reason for the 4.0 scale is that the difference between a 89.5 and a 92.5 is negligible, maybe a couple points here and there where you forgot to label your graph or something. </p>
<p>And on the 100 point scale, is 100 a 4.0? If so, that’s pretty ridiculous, as I don’t know of any decently challenging class that is possible to get 100 in.</p>
<p>Some schools avoid the % system so students do not spend their entire four years begging, pleading and cajoling for an extra point or two from their teachers on every quiz, test, and paper.</p>
<p>^ the begging would happen when a kid needed the extra point to jump a letter grade. With the 100 scale, there would be no reason…the kid gets a 92 or a 93…little difference. However, a 92 might e a A- or 3.66666 and the 93 an A or 4.0.</p>
<p>I’ll start with my bias … I believe a 4.0 scale is MUCH-MUCH better than a 100 point scale … here are the two main reasons.</p>
<p>First, thinking a 95 is “better” than a 93 is what I call the illusion of precision. Sure if you use a 100 point scale a school could rank order the students … the big problem is a 94.256 average really better than a 93.859? There are so many variables in the grade believing the valid significant digits goes two or three decimal places is folly. A 4.0 scale certainly does not provide as many chances for separation of students … but it also does a lot better job of not creating a false separation of students. (BTW - personally I prefer a 4.0 scale with +/- adjustments … this picks up the difference between a 100 and 90 student without over stating the precision.</p>
<p>Second, a 4.0 grading scale is much closer to how performance is measured in the job market … your job performance will likely be graded on a scale with 4-5 brackets very similar to a 4.0 grade scale … in addition, one of the major lessons to learn at work is when your work is good enough; you’ll always have too much to do and will need to decide how much time to spend on each deliverable … doing your absolute best on everything will likely not be possible … the trick is to do good enough at each. IMO a 4.0 scale helps teach these skills much better than a 100 point scale.</p>
<p>We know that not every school uses a 4.0 scale
For example some use a 12 pt scale with + and -</p>
<p>Some use a 4.0 but then a bump for honors or AP </p>
<p>that is why many colleges take the transcript apart and recalculate grades and look at rigor of courseload etc…
and why the GCs send the highschool grading policies with the students transcript/applications.</p>
<p>in the end its about rigor of courses as much as it is about the grade in that course</p>