GPA

What purpose does a GPA actually serve?
Of course it is a measure of average academic performance, but is this really the best indicator of someone's current proficiency in a field/understanding subject matter?

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>the best indicator
Such a thing won't exist until someone solves the P=NP problem.

Not even close.
It's way too easy to have a professor decide he won't play the grade inflation game, which then tanks your GPA relative to everyone else.

It would make much more sense to go by median grade. Indeed, if we did, then grade inflation probably wouldn't be as rampant.

My GPA is super low. Is there any hope for me?
What happens after this?

You do postbac studies and raise your GPA up

you cant get into any good grad school that way can you

No, because there's no standard of GPA between institutions or regions or across fields which takes into account their differences, and indeed there could not be.

Consider the median Harvard GPA is something like 3.99 at graduation but elite engineering-only schools fail out half their class and average a 2.5 or 3.0.

The only viable measure of academic performance is a portfolio of work and projects. The only viable METRIC is standardized testing.

Taking the max grade earned in each course would probably be more accurate and weighting higher level courses more

GPA originally acted as a placeholder for experience when their was no job experience available for recent students.

Now it's basically useless due to the fact that,

>sheer influx of students getting high GPAs
>more and more employers wanting internship experience and/ or certifications
>graduate programs are more interested in academic papers, in field experience, work with nonprofit organizations
>sports programs bring in a shit ton of money so undergraduate programs don't necessarily need high GPAs as much

In other words international competition rendered GPA outside undergraduate programs worthless. Any experience related to your field is preferable to a high GPA.

as someone who hires college grads its a metric of how many fucks youre able to sustainably give over a significant amount of time.

Low gpa = you dont care (smart but lazy meme) or youre not capable. So why should I care about you?

So its a measure of how long you can put up with bullshit/hoop jumping?
I-Is this a joke?

I really don't like the idea of being groomed into a worker drone.

what do you think of someone who has good grades in upper div classes but didnt do well freshman and sophomore year

Better than consistently poor but still not preferable against someone who is close if not as good as you provided that he/she performed better than you in the first years.

Doesn't matter what he thinks about your GPA after your first job user :^)

it measures obedience

Yeah but 90% of jobs are just putting up with bulshit. So it's an important metric.

I've heard other people in hiring positions, and profs as well, say the exact opposite. I've heard of 90%+ students that are useless in a lab, a lady who hires once boasted she never interviewed anyone with over an 85 because they were always too cocky. That seemed a little far, but my point is that employers look for all sorts of things just based on Who they themselves are etc.

I'm not someone with killer marks, but of the two bosses (professors with phd's) i've had they've both given me stellar reviews and kind of scoffed when I brought up my marks weren't killer bc they said anyone worth their salt uses them for nothing more than a rough indicator.

I felt like a lot of the testing at school was dumb. Here's an example - my one chem final asked for reproductions of these graphs concerning marcus theory kinetics. I didn't memorize those graphs or really study marcus theory, it was 3 powerpoint slides in 300+ others. So you honestly are telling me that i'm now "dumber" because I didn't memorize these graphs everyone just regurgitated? Marks are just a number dude, they can't possibly tell you everything about a person.

Not at all.

In the industry you're pretty going to be doing the same task over and over again. It was one of the most crushing things I learned when I graduated. Perhaps they'll ask if you took P chem or computer architecture but they won't ask for GPA.

No employer gives a flying fuck that you got at university. I don't remember a time when I was every questioned about my GPA. It's a very poor measurement if you actually get what's going on. Plenty of people cheat and plenty of people remember just enough to do well on an exam. There's too many factors that go into GPA like did you happen to suck the professor's dick and other students didn't? Does the professor feel the need not to fail any students? (I had plenty of professors who were like this)

HOWEVER if you do you plan on going to graduate/med/dental or some form of higher education you better believe they want to see that you have a 4.0.

So while it's not some definite factor that shows you understand what's going on it's at least some sort of standard. A very poor one to say the least.

>No, because there's no standard of GPA between institutions or regions or across fields

But there is, medical schools use them all the time. GPAs are strong indicators of how one will perform in other academic institutions.

Medical schools use them all the time ... to the detriment of students at non-grade-inflating undergrad institutions everywhere.

My high school assigned GPAs up to 6.0, the next one over (just a few blocks IIRC) hardly ever gave out A's even to AP students (and marked them as 4.0) And you know what, no college gave a shit; that other school had hardly anyone accepted into out-of-state programs because they only looked at the number, while everyone with 5.0-6.0s at mine cruised out. Same classes, same rigor, different inflation -- its no different in undergrad.

Anyone can go to a state public college and walk out with 4.0 as well, but good luck doing that at a reputable private undergrad school.

Hilariously enough, transferring schools allowed me to raise my GPA from a 3.0 to a 3.9 because your GPA is wiped.

who is this spank tank?
would betray the white race and hang on the day of the rope.

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>there's no standard of GPA between institutions or regions or across fields which takes into account their differences, and indeed there could not be.
And this is why I'm in favor of standardized testing.

This. I went from a 2.7 to a 4.0 because I got my shit together. I still fear the day my old GPA will come back to bite me.

What is all this about grade inflation?

Is it just a name for schools dumbing classes down, or are there actually universities that scale grades?

But then students and teachers would be focusing their studies on what the exam will cover rather then useful educational content. A good teacher is one that gives no exams, and spends that time educating and answering questions. Teachers should be guides to their students by adjusting the course material depending on what the students are interested in and what they excel at.

Getting a high grade on a test doesn't mean you know the material, it just means you're a good test taker. You can get around this by making the questions open ended and having students explain their reasoning, but in that case it's up to the teacher to decide whether or not you're just bullshitting and it's no longer a standardized test.

Standardized tests are more a test on how to efficiently use your time to solve a bunch of simple usually unrelated problems. In the real world, you are rarely put under that kind of pressure and problems consist of much more complicated interconnected factors that you need to spend a lot of time thinking about. There could be many unique solutions to a given problem, some will be better than others, and often the best solutions cannot be thought of within a standard exam period. A class is better off discussing topics on a deeper level because stressing over an exam is unhealthy and useless in the real world. Scientific creativity is the most sought after characteristic in STEM fields, yet you can't assign a grade to it without being unfair or biased in some way.

depends on your field of study. Some professional experience might substitute