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Re: [Phys-l] failure is always an option


On May 10, 2008, at 10:53 AM, Michael Edmiston wrote:

Marty Weiss asked why HS class rank is high on the list of predictors for
college success but HS GPA is not high. He asks why they do not go
together.

Actually, they clearly do not go together because grade inflation, although
rampant, is not uniform. This means a person with a 3.8 GPA at one high
school could be considerably less motivated than a person with a 3.6 GPA at
another school. Literally, we see some students with 3.6 or 3.7 who are one
of the top five in a class of 300 at a school with lower grade inflation,
and we see students with 3.90 who are not in the top 10% of students of a
class of 300. The top students at the higher-inflation school all had GPA
of 4.0, 3.98, etc. such that by the time you get down to 3.90 you already
have 30 students above you. Grade inflation is that bad.

That's not what happens. In a post I recently sent out I explained that the admissions dept should know the high school from previous experience or should find out where the applicant comes from. So, it makes a BIG difference that the studenmt who has a 3.85 and is number 20 of a class of 200, just might be a better choice than a student who has a 3.85 and is number 2 in a class of 200. You will find that in many schools with a lot of AP classes and honors classes which rate these classes more than the A or G level classes, many students take as many AP or honors classes as they can, do very well, and all of them have well over 4.20 GPA. In many poorer schools that do not have AP classes students are at a disadvantage and achieve 3.85 or so and find themselves ranked 2 or 3 in a class of 200.

(You may not agree with the national news magazines rankings of high schools ( I certainly find a lot wrong with them) but Newsweek has begun ranking schools by the number of AP classes they offer and the scores the students get.)

So, it remains that the whole thing comes down to not any of this number crunching alone but by the quality of the district. If the university uses the numbers without looking at the whole program they are doing their applicants a disservice. If they take a number 1 from a poor academically prepared district over a #20 from a top notch district they not doing their homework and not earning their pay.

Now, I don't know how many districts there are that have students applying to Bluffton, but when you have hundreds of students from hundreds of districts applying to a school like Temple, Penn, Rutgers, etc or even Rowan which is gaining a national reputation for the engineering department, the admissions people had better start doing what they are getting paid for and that is delving deeply into the quality of these districts and the way the district is preparing students and the rank should become just one of many criteria. That way they know the difference between a student from a township in NY and one from a city in Ohio. I maintain that rank and SAT can only tell so much and many other factors must be used equally.

Marty