Labels are an unavoidable part of life. Tall or short, blonde or brunette, big or small, and so on. But, what happens when numbers become our labels?
There is at least one numerical value that constantly follows students in their academic careers. That’s right: the dreaded grade-point average, or GPA. The question is does this number accurately label us?
In college classes, students are graded at .5 intervals, ranging from 0.0 to 4.0, with no scores in between. Many students complain they miss the next benchmark by only a few points.
To drop from a 4.0 to a 3.5 because a student has accumulated a score one point below the 4.0 mark doesn’t seem fair.
Sadly, GPA is a standardized scale that evaluates all courses equally. For example, GPA does not depend on the difficulty of the class.
An introductory course does not reach the level of difficulty of a 300-level course, but in the big scheme of things, a 2.0 in either will do damage to students’ cumulative GPA. In some sense, a 4.0 in Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures 110 is the same as a 4.0 in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 462, or Biochemistry II.
In other words, the amount of effort we put into each is not the metric by which we are measured.
Most professors structure their classes in different ways. Some professors lecture for two hours and test students on the material a week later, while others take information from a PowerPoint presentation and put it in multiple-choice form.
Certain courses require more time studying and working than others, but both are graded on the same scale.
And that would be cool if education was viewed as inherently beneficial. For some students, GPA is a more important factor for future plans. Students expecting to enroll in graduate school need better grades to be admitted into top schools.
This makes for a trend that somehow pushes students to believe that GPA is a good measure of what you have learned in school.
It isn’t.
Given the new all-encompassing focus on internships, employers probably are looking more at experience and field of study than the applicant’s GPA.
Students should keep in mind that when they see statistics that show MSU on average has posted increases in GPA and ACT scores with each incoming class, it isn’t all that earth-shattering.
The trend in education is that as time passes more information becomes available and therefore becomes applied to academic curriculum.
When it all comes down to it, there is a basic formula for education. In a perfect world, professors should work to make a course challenging, and students should enter class with the mindset to do the best job they possibly can.
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