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Next Level

Good analysis on the perils of grade inflation in college. Back when J was in elementary and middle school the problem of grade inflation was manifested in the honor roll. The schools are intent on making all kids feeling like academic winners so the entry criteria for the honor roll got increasingly relaxed over time. From all As to mostly As and some B to finally a random C was not a deal breaker either. So in the end just about everyone made honor roll. I thought it was a silly business to begin with - honor roll, so none of this felt material in any way. I was focused on J getting a real education. But I started to see where things turned problematic by the end of middle school where kids felt the need to start doing more to stand out from classrooms full of "winners". That problem grew much worse in high school and college as this author describes

Now that A’s are given out like candy corn in the world’s worst Halloween party, they don’t provide much signal, first because, as Woit says, non-unusually-talented students can also get strings of A’s on their transcripts, and also because if you’re competing on grades, the occasional slip can be so costly. Either way, ambitious students have to distinguish themselves in other ways—for example, by publishing articles in journals and conferences. This propagation of “publish or perish” down to the high school level just exacerbates the explosion of publications—apparently, zillions of medical students are kinda required to publish research too, and if publication is a requirement, then the quality is not gonna matter so much, and these papers just get stirred in with whatever remaining legitimate literature is being produced.

In J's case, she responded to all of this by breaking away from the tried and true as early as high school and by the time she was in college, she was going entirely her own way. The process from what I have observed is very much harder because she was choosing to swim against the tide to be in the minority - be visible for being markedly different. To her that was the only way to stand out because whatever the next frontier of winning, everyone is rushing towards it. Publishing papers I am sure will not be good enough in the next few years. 

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