If a high school had 70 kids with a 4.0... (college, GPA, grades)

[golfgal]

If a high school had 70 kids graduate with a 4.0 what would you think about that school? How about on that only had 2 kids with a 4.0?

[Charles Wallace]

Originally Posted by golfgal

If a high school had 70 kids graduate with a 4.0 what would you think about that school? How about on that only had 2 kids with a 4.0?

The first one? My first thought -- absent any other data -- would be grade inflation.

[North Beach Person]

Last year our valedictorian had a 3.75, that was with weighted AP grades. Usually, as with this year, the val and sal are both north of 4.0.
Sometimes it just happens.

[Moonwalkr]

Originally Posted by golfgal

If a high school had 70 kids graduate with a 4.0 what would you think about that school? How about on that only had 2 kids with a 4.0?

Hmm, how do you pick a valedictorian out of that? The school I went to had a larger distribution and weighed the classes based on if it's a regular or AP class. It is practically impossible to have two people have the same gpa unless they took the exact same classes and got the exact same grades (then an ethics committee might look into that).

[harhar]

How many students are there total?

I was in a normal High School with about 2000 students. I graduated with a 3.98 and I was 20th or so in my class (its been a awhile).

If, say it were a decent sized magnet school, offering AP classes, I could see 70 kids getting a 4.0.

I'm pretty sure our valedictorian had a 4.2 or something.

[golfgal]

Say both schools are around 2000 and it is on a 4.0 scale so the best you can have is a 4.0.

[fishingprof]

Depends on the class size to determine if the gpa's are inflated . I graduated with 900 people and there were 18 people with 4.0. Our AP courses weren't weighted any differently than regular level classes so nobody had higher than a 4.0.

[lkb0714]

What you really need to know is percentage of 4.0 GPAs each year. Any single thing can just be some freaky outlier but if it is a trend of 4.0s year after year something very odd is going on.

[teachbeach]

Need more information...demographics, rigor of program, AP or IB courses.

[golfgal]

Originally Posted by teachbeach

Need more information...demographics, rigor of program, AP or IB courses.

Really? In a class of 2000 kids, 70 of them get 4.0's, sorry even if it is an AP/IB top notch school, if that many kids are getting a 4.0 they aren't being challenged enough. One would also think that college admissions officers would laugh at stats from a school like this as well.