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Given 2 equally smart people. The one that has the opportunity to take more AP/Honors will have more opportunity to get a higher GPA.
by charlesju 5y ago
Given 2 equally smart people. The one that has the opportunity to take more AP/Honors will have more opportunity to get a higher GPA.
- threatofrain 5y agoGaming implies that your metrics are being ruined by moving towards an opposite effect, not that they fail to be perfect. Similarly, doing well in the IMO could be a predictor of wealth and circumstance, but it's also a signal for math talent. If we're saying that AP tests and classes are too easy, then of course people can have a discussion about increasing difficulty.
- charlesju 5y agoAll I know is there are trivial AP classes like AP Government, AP Econ, AP Art, AP Computer Science, etc. at my school. Almost everyone got an A and a 4 or 5 on the test.
- TchoBeer 5y agoIn 2021, Under 50% of students got a 4/5 on compsci, econ (both of them), gov, and Art. The only thing which can charitably be included is AP drawing, which about 52% got a 4 or above. The high scores in your classes have more to do with school quality than anything else. Stats from https://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Service/AP-Exam-Score-Distributions.php https://www.totalregistration.net/AP-Exam-Registration-Servi...
- dahfizz 5y agoAnd as a result, the person who took more Honors classes will be "more educated" (assuming the Honors / AP classes succeed in their stated goal). Therefore, the student that took the Honors classes is more competitive. It comes back to the question of what universities should prioritize. Should they be optimizing for the fairest / most equal student body, or the most gifted / competitive student body?
- jfengel 5y agoMore educated and more competitive are not the same thing. What you want is the most talented, hardest working, brightest students. That's difficult to discern given the differences in the availability of opportunity. Scaling for availability is hard. But it is clear that just selecting for the students who succeeded in the best environment will leave you missing out on potential. And worse, that rapidly becomes self-reinforcing, since the next generation of students will be influenced by your choices on this one.
- visarga 5y agoEven when parents are paying for the lesson, it's still the student that has to do the hard work. But a student with less help deserves more merit for achieving the same.
- exolymph 5y agoAnd that betrays the whole game, right? It's not about teaching knowledge. It's about filtering and sorting people into legible strata for employers. That and babysitting so parents can work without their kids setting the house on fire.
- 1980phipsi 5y agoIf you have a weighted GPA... Also, GPA is not a great measure of student quality. IRT [1,2] is better. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1434976 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1434976 [2] https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=mathcs_honors https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar...