I couldn't agree more. There are a few schools ("good" ones!) that we get a fair number of applicants from where I've learned to just ignore applicants' GPAs w

I couldn't agree more. There are a few schools ("good" ones!) that we get a fair number of applicants from where I've learned to just ignore applicants' GPAs when evaluating them, because they're inflated to the point of being useless. The candidates might still get an interview, but it's now hinging entirely on the quality of their cover letter and whatever extracurricular things they've posted to GitHub/Google Code/Kiln/whatever. In other words, their godawful expensive Ivy League education is now literally worth less, to me, than some of the much smaller, cheaper tech colleges whose GPAs I've found are actually at least vaguely reflective of the students' abilities. People such as your parent post make my life easier, I guess: when in doubt, I can get lazy and throw the résumé in the trash. Otherwise, I think that it's way past time for universities to start caring about grade inflation, whether it comes from widespread cheating or from lazy professors.