Re: Concerned about grades (longish)

[Tim Burgess <tburgess@JAGUAR1.USOUTHAL.EDU>]

> This is the aspect that makes me feel my son got "cheated."  I can see the
> word cheated might not be best word.  What happened was he graduated at a
> bad time.  Grade inflation at his school made the HS GPA and class rank

Unfortunately this is the thinking of many parents who are pressuring the
system to generate desired results.  The response is the inflation that
is railed against.

The trend, in general, appears to be away from ACT and SAT scores.  My
understanding is that an increasing number of colleges are not setting
entrance requirements.  Many students avoid every difficult course
possible. Warning them appears not to work because in the majority of
cases they return with college degrees four years later.

Academic ability is quite common.  The lack of self discipline and
resistance to responsibility and lack of curiousity seem to be the
larger block for the students I interact with.

Tim