Re:Asian-American admissions at Harvard
by DuskStar on Saturday June 16, 2018 @01:50AM
(#17326082)
My high school graduating class (~15 of the ~250 were "Valedictorians" thanks to grade inflation and a lack of a weighting system; they all had 4.0s) says differently. This was in an inner city public school, mind you.
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Admissions officers know individual high schools, and the different grading systems. They can separate the bullshit for the most part
In other words, if you're from a shitty high school (or even a "best in the county" high school, if it's a unexceptional county) you're shit out of luck - because now the admissions officers will just reject everyone from that school out of hand, no matter their grades.
Objective standards can really help people without the connections to succeed otherwise.
Re:Asian-American admissions at Harvard
by eanzenberg on Saturday June 16, 2018 @02:15AM
(#17326167)
That's the literal goal of the SAT. A standardized test across all schools.
As a non-American, I always found the GPA system a little strange. In high school, our marks were always scores out of 100.
As someone who's moved between states and cities all across America, GPA really should be dumped for system like that.
I've lived in schools where an A/4.00's average score was 90-100 and I lived in another school where it ranged from 95-100. 3.00 would be from 80-89 at the one school and 90-94 at the other.
From raw GPA data, students who had a 90% average would look great if they graduated from the first school, but just OK if they graduated from the latter school. And I've had friends that went to schools that had max possible GPAs of 5.0.
It's a mess.