Universities adding more data to college transcripts

[DrKT]

I thought this story was very interesting... http://chronicle.com...ture-of/127204/

Some professor friends of mine are talking about how this is a great move to fight grade inflation. I know there are a ton of schools where students are "given" grades and the entire class basically receives an A. Now that they're adding in median grades and percentiles to transcripts, do you think its a good move or a bad move? How do you think it will affect people who are applying to grad school next year?

From what I hear there is speculation that this will become a nationwide trend pretty soon.

Thoughts?

Edited April 29, 2011 by DrKT

[bgreenster]

Honestly, I would have liked something like this. I went to a university that doesn't have high grade inflation, and so I'd like for graduate programs to see my grades and GPA in context. My grades aren't impressive compared to people that went to schools that regularly give A's, but they're good for students at my school. Also, I never took any "easy A" classes partly because I was interested in other classes, and partly because my school would literally force professors to change the grading if they hear the class was being taken for easy A's.

My concern is that these new transcripts seem a bit confusing and would take some effort to be interpreted correctly. But that's just on first glance, and I'm sure if it DID become a norm people would get used to it.

[neuropsych76]

I would not have minded it at all. I got pretty average grades compared to prospective grad students (3.7ish) but a lot of the classes where I received a B or a C the class average was even worse. grade inflation is not a problem at my school.

Examples: calculus class, i got an unimpressive B but the class average was around a D with many F's. even a class like my intro writing class i got a B- and that was one of the highest grades.

though i'm not sure if this will actually make all that much of a difference in grad school apps. i feel like grad schools would only take this information into account if two students were very close and needed a tie breaker.

[lyonessrampant]

Like the other posters, I think this is a good idea because it gives adcoms who may not be familiar with an applicant's undergrad perspective about the strength of their grades. Depending on the field, though, I don't know if this information will really strongly affect an applicant's chances at admission. I'm in English, and while good grades are, well, good, it tends to be the subjective components of the application (writing sample, SOP, recommendations) that matter A LOT more than the objective components (GPA, GRE scores, etc.).

[DrKT]

Honestly, I would have liked something like this. I went to a university that doesn't have high grade inflation, and so I'd like for graduate programs to see my grades and GPA in context. My grades aren't impressive compared to people that went to schools that regularly give A's, but they're good for students at my school. Also, I never took any "easy A" classes partly because I was interested in other classes, and partly because my school would literally force professors to change the grading if they hear the class was being taken for easy A's.

My concern is that these new transcripts seem a bit confusing and would take some effort to be interpreted correctly. But that's just on first glance, and I'm sure if it DID become a norm people would get used to it.

That's true. I was reading some of the comments on the Chronicle and they said the same thing. They're definitely not as easy to read on the first glance.

I got into a semi-heated Facebook debate about this topic.... from someone who chose to go to an "easy school" because they felt like they also deserved a shot at going to grad school to achieve their version of the American Dream (paraphrased quote). I wonder how many other students think like this.

Grade inflation is definitely an issue in Higher Education and I think adding some context does show you if an A is really equal to an A, you know what I mean?

[DrKT]

I would not have minded it at all. I got pretty average grades compared to prospective grad students (3.7ish) but a lot of the classes where I received a B or a C the class average was even worse. grade inflation is not a problem at my school.

Examples: calculus class, i got an unimpressive B but the class average was around a D with many F's. even a class like my intro writing class i got a B- and that was one of the highest grades.

though i'm not sure if this will actually make all that much of a difference in grad school apps. i feel like grad schools would only take this information into account if two students were very close and needed a tie breaker.

I would imagine that it *might* come down to that, but maybe not. It does make you wonder though.... for those people who are relying on "easy A's" to get into grad school, you think they end up at the top of admissions stack anyway when it comes right down to it? Especially with all of the competition?

[latte thunder]

The only thing that concerns me is that students don't always have a choose in whether or not that go to an "easy school"

There may be people who are smart enough to handle going to a notoriously hard school like say, Uchicago, but who can't afford anything more than community college. For example I know of plenty of people who have gotten into OSU, but can't afford it and go to Columbus state community college for a couple years instead. An entire year of CSCC cost less than one quarter of OSU, so if money is a concern it's an easy choice. Even when comparing state schools, not all state schools were created equally. I don't want to pick on any schools in particular, but we all know that not all state schools in our home state have equal educational value (and typically, the cheaper they are the worse they are, which again is a disadvantage to the poor).

It penalizes them to get an A in math in a school where just about everyone can get an A. That doesn't mean they didn't try hard or aren't capable of more, the grading scale could have just been easy. What happens when two people apply to grad school and one has an A average from private school in classes where the average is a B and the other has an A average in a communityschool/lower tier state school where the Class average is an A? That second student may have also scored an A at the private school, but wasn't given the opportunity.

Of course I'm not saying it's fair the other way around either. Kid 2 may have NOT been able to score as highly as Kid 1 in same enviroment, but this metric doesn't tell us that. However, this metric may inspire confidence that it does. It's a little scary to think it possible for a adcom to dismiss kid 2 because they think that this "schedule point average" has fixed this discrepancy.

[rgarnham]

I should think that most of the people at the top universities, and especially those who are concerned with admissions, are already aware of which colleges are guilty of rampant grade inflation.

[DrKT]

The only thing that concerns me is that students don't always have a choose in whether or not that go to an "easy school"

There may be people who are smart enough to handle going to a notoriously hard school like say, Uchicago, but who can't afford anything more than community college. For example I know of plenty of people who have gotten into OSU, but can't afford it and go to Columbus state community college for a couple years instead. An entire year of CSCC cost less than one quarter of OSU, so if money is a concern it's an easy choice. Even when comparing state schools, not all state schools were created equally. I don't want to pick on any schools in particular, but we all know that not all state schools in our home state have equal educational value (and typically, the cheaper they are the worse they are, which again is a disadvantage to the poor).

It penalizes them to get an A in math in a school where just about everyone can get an A. That doesn't mean they didn't try hard or aren't capable of more, the grading scale could have just been easy. What happens when two people apply to grad school and one has an A average from private school in classes where the average is a B and the other has an A average in a communityschool/lower tier state school where the Class average is an A? That second student may have also scored an A at the private school, but wasn't given the opportunity.

Of course I'm not saying it's fair the other way around either. Kid 2 may have NOT been able to score as highly as Kid 1 in same enviroment, but this metric doesn't tell us that. However, this metric may inspire confidence that it does. It's a little scary to think it possible for a adcom to dismiss kid 2 because they think that this "schedule point average" has fixed this discrepancy.

Great points Latte!

[DrKT]

I should think that most of the people at the top universities, and especially those who are concerned with admissions, are already aware of which colleges are guilty of rampant grade inflation.

It's not just on the university level though. You still have people who go to top universities who will opt to take the "easy" classes from the professors who gives out the most lenient grades.

[spctle342]

I'm inclined to agree with those who are in favor of this change, but I have to wonder how successful it will be if not adopted on a large-scale basis. A student with a "contextual" GPA of 3.8 still has to compete against students with the same GPA from other institutions where the performance of other students isn't known. I might worry that my GPA (no context) would be viewed as grade inflation when compared to that of a student whose transcript clearly shows no evidence of grade inflation, even if I were as highly ranked as that student. I think it could be messy if not applied carefully, but I guess the true consequences remain to be seen.

[bgreenster]

Wow, loving the debate on here! It's further proof that there never is a simple answer to any problem, huh?

Like in many cases, cross the board consistency would be best. It would be difficult for this to be useful or fair without a majority of schools applying it. There are just so many factors, especially in terms of making it fair for everyone. I agree that it could hurt the good students in schools with grade inflation - let's be real, how many of us knew about our future undergraduate school's grading before entering classes? It wouldn't be right for students at such schools to have their A's looked down on when they could have received the same grades in a school that graded more toughly. At the same time, it isn't currently fair if hard-working students receive lower grades for the same level of work, without that being recognized.

I still think this is a better option (but I am obviously biased) and I believe that those stellar students forced to go to "lower" schools due to limited plausible options would still be able to stand out because they could get great letters of reference and their abilities could still show in the rest of their applications as well. I guess the same could be said for the current situation, but it's hard if a grad program has a minimum GPA and so you may not even make it to that stage where they're looking at your other material. I'm aware the min GPA thing isn't usually a real factor, but it still makes me worry sometimes that I won't get the same look-over because I don't have a 3.5.

Also, many people say that admissions people are familiar with how tough certain schools grade, but I really have a hard time believing this is always the case. There are a LOT of schools, and while they may be aware of schools that are particularly known for lower or higher grades, I seriously doubt they know of all of them. Plus, it would be basically impossible to know which classes were difficult or not within that school. For example, at my school, Intro to Microeconomics was a weed-out class for students wanting to enter the business program so the grades were much lower in general than you would expect from an intro economics course (and this applies to many of the school's intro courses).

[starmaker]

This seems like it would negatively affect people who did reasonably well at universities with unusually strong student bodies. A median, or below-median, student, at, say, Caltech (to choose an example without much grade inflation), or Harvard (to choose an example that does have some grade inflation) is probably still smart enough and a strong enough student to be a fine grad student. Won't it only hurt them to get transcripts saying that they were average, or even below average? One would hope that the people making admissions decisions realize that you have to be very strong to be at these schools in the first place, and don't hold it against them, but who knows.

It would probably help people with relatively good grades at schools without much grade inflation. I don't think it would hurt people from gentler schools much - there's a range of number grades that warrant an A, and something like this could distinguish a top student's A from a less stellar student's A, in a class where everyone gets As.

Mostly, I think it will promote grade-grubbing and excessive competitiveness within classes. Now it's not enough to just get your good grade and then spend the rest of your time doing interesting things that actually mean something outside of the undergrad and grad/professional school admissions bubble worlds, like projects and research and internships. Now, you have to beat everybody else while getting your good grade it in order to impress the grad schools...students will go whining to their profs over a few points, refuse to study together or help each other, spend more time on classes instead of gaining research and work and other professional experience. For that reason I oppose it. Do we really want to assign such fine-grained, competition-oriented, scales, to such an imperfect tool for measuring merit? Heck, I think even counting pluses and minuses in GPA is too fine-grained.

[wildeisonmine]

I'm about to graduate from a college that's included median grades on our transcripts for quite some time (it's a small ivy in Northern New England--you can probably guess what it is.) I don't really think it affected my graduate applications in any substantial way, though I am in English, where the subjective parts of the application are more important. The median grades in my English classes tend to be As or A-'s--while getting an A in those courses isn't anything to phone home about, getting an A in an English class with a B+ average is pretty impressive, just because it shows that the professor is grading a bit more difficultly. Those more "difficult" classes were also the ones in which I achieved citations--which professors will occasionally give to a student from whom a mere letter grade is not sufficient, and they're allowed to include a few sentences that will be attached to any official transcripts that get sent out--and whom I eventually asked to write my LORs.

Personally, I think median grades are more helpful when selecting courses while still an undergrad--it's nice to be able to tell, for instance, which sections of a large lecture course have more difficult professors (a good thing if you're just trying to fulfill a distrib) or, if you're one of the more lazy students that populate my college, it also helps you figure out which courses are going to be the "easiest."

Edited May 6, 2011 by wildeisonmine