Tsk tsk. I attended one of the finest primary schools in the country, and went to a private, Jesuit high school. I did not maintain a B average at high school. I didn't maintain a cumulative B average at college until my last semester (when I decided to do some work in order to polish my grad school resume). By and large, I thought the work to be boring and largely below my skill level.
After college, I attended graduate school at one of the highest ranked schools in the nation, based largely on very high standardized test scores. I found work that interested me and I graduated with high honors. You can't lump low GPA people into one category. We're not all the same.
I passed both of my state licensing exams on the first attempt, too -- and I think the average professional engineer fails at least 2-3 times before passing.
“You can’t lump low GPA people into one category. We’re not all the same.”
I have served 4 years on admissions committees to professional schools and you are dead on target with your assessment. This makes the clear and present case for standardized tests to determine what has been retained and can be applied. Standardized tests also tend to level the field across multiple undergrad institutions where awarded grades for the same work differ greatly. A grade of “A” from one institution may equate to a “C+” from a more rigorous institution.
You are absolutely right: GPAs do not reflect the fact that those who take hard classes frequently have lower GPAs. I was one of them, but through no fault of my own...
I was a “B-” student in high school, and in the lower half of my class graduating. I was also taking higher math and science courses during my senior year, and was struggling with physics especially. My counselors even asked me if I could drop some of those tougher courses just to save my GPA, which had been a pretty solid 3.5 until then.
But my father, an aerospace engineer who worked on many notable missions, (including the Saturn V project) insisted that I take the more difficult courses just because “I might need them someday”. In his heart of hearts, I think he really hoped that I might become an engineer someday. He never could comprehend how even simple algebraic equations really fried my brain, and he just knew if I kept at it, I’d be able to finally understand and build a rocket to take us to Mars...
So I stayed the course, finished in the bottom half of my class, and watched as the “easy A” kids who took nothing but journalism and basketweaving got lauded for their high GPAs. Meanwhile, I was that girl keeping her head down in the back trying to figure out the trajectory on some distant object, and making Cs while doing so.
Still, it didn’t affect me too much regarding college - I got a near perfect score on my ACT and got a top score on the PSAT, and went to college to become an elementary school teacher. Still, it always made me a little upset at my father, because I felt humilitated by my GPA - I just HAD to take those difficult courses I felt I would never use in my chosen profession...
That is, until I started homeschooling my son - and wouldn’t you know it, he’s in fourth grade and he’s studying to be an engineer? Physics. Chemistry. The whole nine yards! And now I’m thanking God that I took those courses that blew my GPA to bits, because now I’m able to teach physics and higher math to a boy who swears that HE will be the one; the one to build the rocket to take us to Mars - and beyond.
I wish I could tell my father “thank you”. He never got to meet my son, but I know he believed in his heart of hearts that the world needs a good engineer - and a good teacher to teach them...