What is Grade Inflation

       Much has been in the news of late concerning economic inflation. In simplest terms, this means that prices for the things we buy are increasing. However, this is not the only type of inflation a family with a soon-to-be college student should be concerned about. There’s also such a thing as grade inflation.

After a round of admission decisions was released at a coveted university near my high school this spring, an in-the-know parent inquired as to why we’re not able to get more students who seemingly work harder and harder and churn out better grades and test scores than in years prior into that school. The answer? Grade inflation.

This is a very similar concept to economic inflation where something that used to cost $1 now cost $2. While it used to take a 1250 SAT score and 3.75 GPA to get into the school referenced above, I feel like a student really needs around a 1350 score and a 3.9 GPA now. This is all simply due to the fact that when it comes to college admissions, students are very much in competition with each other and that competition inevitably brings a raising of a bar. The repercussions of this grade inflation are far-reaching.

At the student level, it means that students have to perform better in more difficult classes. If they really want to get into that college of their dreams, they may well have to spend more time doing homework and standardized test prep. Indeed testing is where grade inflation might be most pronounced.

It might be easy to argue here that this is exactly why colleges are starting to move away from testing, but I fear we could see the opposite effect. Before standardized testing was a thing, college admissions were based mostly on grades as well as how well a student could bolster their resume. Unfortunately, that bolstering often served as an indicator of one’s background and financial means and this is what often decided whether a student was admitted or not. Standardized testing was introduced as a way to mitigate this effect. 

Grade inflation is a problem when it comes to test scores. All students can’t make a perfect SAT score, but I’m not sure that moving away from them all together is the answer as this will force students to do more to build those resumes. That’s probably easier to do for more advantaged students and we could end up back where we were nearly 100 years ago before the advent of standardized testing. Perhaps a re-calibration of standardized test scores is a potential solution. 

Anyway, for now, many colleges are still requiring test scores. Those seem to inch up every year as do GPAs, the rigor of courses students select, and the quality of their involvement in all sorts of things outside of the classroom. This means today’s students must work harder than yesterday’s, and they’ll have to work even harder tomorrow.