Over the past decade, high schools and colleges across the country have experienced rampant GPA inflation, with Madison being no exception. With a four point grading scale that is essentially out of five points and a grading system that allows frequent replacement of past grades, Madison has made it easier than ever for students to have hyperinflated GPAs.
“I think that the skills based grading system allows a lot of GPA inflation because it’s not a true reflection of how you’ve done the entire year,” Anika Chandra (‘24) said.
With the ability for students to get one A, and magically fix a past grade, students’ ability to earn an A in a class has gotten significantly easier.
“You can’t just pick one grade and say that because you got an A on one test your overall grade should be an A,” Chandra said. “If you only do good at the end of the year, that doesn’t mean you’re an A-student, it just means you’re an end-of-the-year-A-student.”
Additionally, AP classes have had a significant impact on GPA inflation.
“With more AP options, while the course itself may not change drastically, when an honors course goes away and there’s just an AP option, it impacts GPAs,” Madison counselor Nicholas LaLone said. “Mathematically, even if the experience may only be slightly different, the student who takes that same course later could potentially have a higher GPA weight with that course. So, as more AP options become available there is potential for a larger swing if the same course options aren’t still available and they’re replacing others that didn’t have the weight.”
While students may enjoy the 1.0 bump that allows them to think of their B as an A, it hurts them in the long run. Due to the different grading policies at various high schools, almost all colleges are forced to strip the weight off of student GPAs and recalculate it on an unweighted 4.0 scale.
“A lot of colleges recalculate GPAs anyway without all of the weight, so weighting every single class just gives students a false sense of security,” Adriana Maya (‘24) said. “It can be pretty harmful because it’s harder for students to know where they actually stand.”
As grades across the country increase over time, student GPAs have begun to drift into the highest possible range where they become clustered. Because grade inflation has the upper limit of an A, grades can only be raised so much before suddenly everyone has extremely similar GPAs. This has weakened-and will continue to weaken-the value of a GPA as an indicator of academic achievement, because if everyone has a “perfect” 4.0 GPA then it means essentially nothing.
