Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Ivy League Admissions.

Grade inflation is ubiquitous, I think.

I don't know if this has been commented on up thread, but some local g/t kids are taking courses at Harvard Extension around age 14/15. Also, it looks like kids outside of the Boston area are potentially able to enroll in courses, or even in a MA program, at Harvard Extension online.

Eugenie de Silva completed a MA through Harvard Extension online (http://eugeniedesilva.com/eugenie-carys-de-silva). I don't know how common that method, but notice Eugenie is enrolled now in a PhD program through Leicester U (UK) online too.

Yes, Harvard Extension isn't Harvard. That's a given. However, it might provide some challenge that so many of us are searching for with our kids and be doable for some needing a more non-traditional path. From what I've heard, many of the faculty at Harvard or nearby colleges/universities teach at Harvard Extension and it's a small pittance of the tuition too.

Thanksgiving program for high school kids at MIT.

Not surprising. I don't recall seeing a comparable point made about Brown or Dartmouth - not that there isn't grade inflation there too. Grade inflation is ubiquitous, I think.

Data provided by the Office of Institutional Research show that 53.4 percent of grades given at the University during the 2012-2013 academic year were As, a 36 percent increase from the 1992-1993 school year, in which As composed 39.1 percent of all grades.

This percentage would be even higher if the data did not include courses taken on a Satisfactory/No Credit scale.

...

Grade inflation is a “part of a change in culture on the high end of the academy that goes along with students being more and more credentialed,” said Provost Mark Schlissel P’15, adding that students have come to see any grade below an A as unacceptable.

Students have developed a “sense of entitlement,” said Karen Newman, professor of comparative literature and chair of the department. “They all expect that they will continue to achieve at the high level at which they were achieving in secondary school.”

But Schlissel said an increasingly talented and prepared student body does not necessarily justify a commensurate rise in As.

Several faculty members suggested establishing higher expectations for students.

“Everyone’s coming in within six inches of the ceiling instead of four feet under. Well, let’s raise the ceiling,” said Stephen Nelson, higher education expert and senior scholar in the Leadership Alliance at Brown.

Though Brown students may be more talented than the average student, “it is still possible to distinguish between performance levels at Brown, and that is what we should be doing to give accurate feedback,” said Luther Spoehr, senior lecturer in education.

...

Several faculty members, as well as Schlissel, cited students’ permission to drop courses until the final exam period as a factor that drives up the percentage of As.

Another explanation for the lack of Cs and comparatively high number of As is the erasure of failures from a student’s transcript, said David Lindstrom, professor of sociology and chair of the department, calling this policy “almost academic fraud.”

Lindstrom said students have asked him to fail them rather than give them Cs.

...

“Not being more rigorous in grading doesn’t allow room for the truly and unusually gifted student(s) to distinguish themselves,” Schlissel said.

Grades have “lost meaning, and that’s a detriment to our students,” he added, noting that “it’s an illusion that grades help you when everybody gets high grades.”

Grade inflation underprepares students for the harsher evaluation they will encounter in the world beyond Brown, Schlissel said.

High grades may mislead students into pursuing fields for which they are not well-suited, Nelson added.

Several people also expressed worry that grade inflation reduces student work ethic.

[T]he AO (admissions office) offers to schedule interviews for every candidate that applies, wherever there are in the world. Cities like NYC have a surplus of alumni and often have two year waiting periods just to be allowed to interview. In the Bay Area, we are generally a bit short of interviewers and will focus on candidates ranked 3 or higher by the AO. The goal of the interview is NOT to get facts (e.g. SAT scores, list of accomplishments, rankings). Those details will all come out in the application itself. Instead, we try to get a sense of the candidate as a person and most importantly how they might fit in with their potential peers in college. The AO asks interviewers to report on "What is it like to sit and talk to the student? What are the student’s motivations or aspirations? Does the conversation flow freely? What kind of roommate will this student be?" The last one is my favorite and usually what I like to focus on.

In the end, the interviewer will write up a report with their impressions of the candidate along with specific examples and quotations from them. Strong candidates will get longer write ups. Non-competitive candidates will get shorter ones but any reservations we have should be explained. We rank students in several areas from 1+ (the highest) to 5-. All students start with 3 and move up/down from there. For example, in extracurriculars, a students who participates actively (5-10+ hours/week plus competitions) in Math Olympiad (a popular club here) will get a 3. If they have won some sort of state or regional recognition, they will get a score in the 2 range (+/-). If they make it to the national or international level, they may get a 1 (extremely rare). Most accepted students will be in the 2/2+ range. During the final round of admissions, the whole admit committee at Harvard will put the interview report on a projector while a regional "advocate" reads through the highlights of a candidate's application before a decision is made. Since I don't work on the admissions side, I can't say for certain how much weight the interview has but a good report will certainly nudge up candidates who are already competitive on paper.

As far as college interviewing goes, DW and I have being volunteering with the local Silicon Valley Harvard club for the past 6 years. In that time, we have interviewed over 30 candidates. Of those, 3 were wait-listed and only 1 was accepted (admit rate for 2015 was 5.3%). Many, many more were, by any standard, truly exceptional students (near-prefect scores on their exams, 4.0+ GPAs, 8-13 AP courses, diverse extracurriculars) but competition is quite fierce in the public school districts here. Many of the students have highly educated parents who work in tech and have similarly high expectations for their kids. We love meeting the students at the various recruiting events but it's the parents who give us the most trouble!