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Maybe someone in the US system can explain it to a European. I don't get why a lottery of GPA > 3.5 is so different from an entrance exam? Isn't it hard to get

Maybe someone in the US system can explain it to a European. I don't get why a lottery of GPA > 3.5 is so different from an entrance exam? Isn't it hard to get a high GPA? If Asian kids are better at the entrance exam aren't they also gonna have the highest grades? Is it that the entrance exam is very topic specific compared to general grades? Also, if you want the best kids at some subject, why would you think that would give you the same profile as the average population? Unless you do an unbiased sampling of the population, whatever your high school is for is going to have a lopsided distribution.

lacker 6y ago
A 3.5 is a pretty low bar for a school like TJ. The problem isn't switching to GPA per se, it's that this is a massive lowering of standards.
detaro 6y ago
(non-US, but don't think it's relevant to the answer. Other countries have similar scenarios) It's not specified how the entrance exam exactly worked - if the exam + maybe other inputs are used for a ranking in which the best are picked, the group forming the top X students in that ranking can be quite different from X students randomly picked from the Y students with a good enough GPA (Y is substantially larger than X). In addition to that, an exam can prioritize things through its design. The obvious one is fields (a school can focus on STEM, or language skills, or ...). But it can also target other skills: a simple example would be stacking it with questions that require more cross-discipline thinking, or quickly working with previously unknown things, which normal school exams don't tend to particularly test for. And it has a chance of picking up people who fit the profile for the school, but whose GPA is not good enough because they struggle with some subjects or with their current school - people can be gifted but do quite badly in traditional schooling. An extra entrance process at least gives them a chance to jump past that. Random choice from "good enough" GPA just gives you a random set of generally good students. If you have a focus in mind for your school, you probably can create something more extraordinary by stricter targeting (although that's not without its problems and challenges!)
ghgdynb1 6y ago
Here’s the problem with GPA: it penalizes the chemical engineering and economics double major who finished in four years and rewards the peace studies major who finished in five, but with a higher GPA. A standardized test has the feature of being standardized.
- lazyasciiart 6y ago
  That shouldn't come up much for middle school kids, presumably.
  - ghgdynb1 6y ago
    I'm making the broader point. If the concern is that middle-school kids don't self-select into harder classes, I get the concern a bit better. The implication, which I leave unstated, is that everything becomes an arms race to see which middle school can give its students the most ludicrous GPA (e.g. 7.5/4.0). Any grade other than a perfect one becomes a disaster, but that isn't a concern for most students because they all get perfect grades. With no more meaningful feedback from assessments, in the long run such policies do about as much good as throwing out grades entirely. At least in a standardized testing-induced arms race, you have to learn something to succeed. Even the most cynical will concede testing strategies.
finolex1 6y ago
If I understand the American high school system correctly, 3.5 is not a particularly high bar, especially with grade inflation in recent decades. For context, most students admitted to Harvard or Yale have close to a 4.0 weighted GPA. It would be like randomly picking among students who scored >70% on some exam, instead of picking the top x%. Furthermore, GPA is not very comparable between different high schools.
- commandlinefan 6y ago
  > 3.5 is not a particularly high bar I'm assuming that's 3.5/4.0. At least where my kids are in school in Texas, that ceiling is now 5.0: if you take honors/AP classes, they're weighted a full point above the "ordinary" classes, so if you take all advanced courses and get all A's, your final GPA will be a 5.0.
csande17 6y ago
A GPA of 3.5 corresponds to an average grade somewhere between B+ and A-. A lot of students achieve this grade point average: https://qz.com/1032183/no-wonder-young-americans-feel-so-important-when-half-of-them-finish-high-school-as-a-students/ https://qz.com/1032183/no-wonder-young-americans-feel-so-imp... claims that 47% of high school graduates achieve at least an A- average. This is almost certainly less selective than whatever they were doing with the entrance exam. A big part of this is grade inflation -- it's easier to earn an A now than it was in 1990. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2011462.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2011462.pd... is a good report on how grades have changed.

lacker 6y ago

A 3.5 is a pretty low bar for a school like TJ. The problem isn't switching to GPA per se, it's that this is a massive lowering of standards.

detaro 6y ago

(non-US, but don't think it's relevant to the answer. Other countries have similar scenarios) It's not specified how the entrance exam exactly worked - if the exam + maybe other inputs are used for a ranking in which the best are picked, the group forming the top X students in that ranking can be quite different from X students randomly picked from the Y students with a good enough GPA (Y is substantially larger than X). In addition to that, an exam can prioritize things through its design. The obvious one is fields (a school can focus on STEM, or language skills, or ...). But it can also target other skills: a simple example would be stacking it with questions that require more cross-discipline thinking, or quickly working with previously unknown things, which normal school exams don't tend to particularly test for. And it has a chance of picking up people who fit the profile for the school, but whose GPA is not good enough because they struggle with some subjects or with their current school - people can be gifted but do quite badly in traditional schooling. An extra entrance process at least gives them a chance to jump past that. Random choice from "good enough" GPA just gives you a random set of generally good students. If you have a focus in mind for your school, you probably can create something more extraordinary by stricter targeting (although that's not without its problems and challenges!)

ghgdynb1 6y ago

Here’s the problem with GPA: it penalizes the chemical engineering and economics double major who finished in four years and rewards the peace studies major who finished in five, but with a higher GPA. A standardized test has the feature of being standardized.

lazyasciiart 6y ago
That shouldn't come up much for middle school kids, presumably.
- ghgdynb1 6y ago
  I'm making the broader point. If the concern is that middle-school kids don't self-select into harder classes, I get the concern a bit better. The implication, which I leave unstated, is that everything becomes an arms race to see which middle school can give its students the most ludicrous GPA (e.g. 7.5/4.0). Any grade other than a perfect one becomes a disaster, but that isn't a concern for most students because they all get perfect grades. With no more meaningful feedback from assessments, in the long run such policies do about as much good as throwing out grades entirely. At least in a standardized testing-induced arms race, you have to learn something to succeed. Even the most cynical will concede testing strategies.

finolex1 6y ago

If I understand the American high school system correctly, 3.5 is not a particularly high bar, especially with grade inflation in recent decades. For context, most students admitted to Harvard or Yale have close to a 4.0 weighted GPA. It would be like randomly picking among students who scored >70% on some exam, instead of picking the top x%. Furthermore, GPA is not very comparable between different high schools.

commandlinefan 6y ago
> 3.5 is not a particularly high bar I'm assuming that's 3.5/4.0. At least where my kids are in school in Texas, that ceiling is now 5.0: if you take honors/AP classes, they're weighted a full point above the "ordinary" classes, so if you take all advanced courses and get all A's, your final GPA will be a 5.0.

csande17 6y ago

A GPA of 3.5 corresponds to an average grade somewhere between B+ and A-. A lot of students achieve this grade point average: https://qz.com/1032183/no-wonder-young-americans-feel-so-important-when-half-of-them-finish-high-school-as-a-students/ https://qz.com/1032183/no-wonder-young-americans-feel-so-imp... claims that 47% of high school graduates achieve at least an A- average. This is almost certainly less selective than whatever they were doing with the entrance exam. A big part of this is grade inflation -- it's easier to earn an A now than it was in 1990. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2011462.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pdf/studies/2011462.pd... is a good report on how grades have changed.