Apparently the Dean of Loyola Law School owns a DeLorean, because he just went back in time and changed everyone’s grades. If you graduated from Loyola, your GPA just retroactively went up by a third of a grade point. And everyone currently going to school there will be getting a whole grade higher in each class than they deserve would have gotten under the older, sane grading system. The kind of work that used to net you a B+ will now result in an A-.
Why the change? Well, unless you’ve spent the last few years in the fifties trying to get your parents to bone, you probably know that the economy is sort of broken. Legal jobs have been hit especially hard. Graduates of even the über-elite schools aren’t seeing the opportunities they have in years past, so you can imagine what it’s like if you’re graduating from a school that isn’t in the top single digits. Employers look at your GPA, so Loyola thought they’d do their graduates a favor and just give them all a higher GPA. If you’re a Loyola student or graduate, it’s like Santa had sex with the Easter Bunny, and there are now eggs full of presents everywhere.
But maybe not. I mean, does Loyola really think that this is going to go unnoticed, and that potential employers are going to accept the higher, now-fortified-with-more-bullshit GPA? I can’t help but imagine that employers will just mentally subtract .33 from the number they see. Which kind of just seems embarrassing.
The first thing I wondered about was what happens to the people who got A+s? Now anyone who would have gotten an A before gets an A+, so what happens to the A+ kids? Well, in this brave new world we’re entering, there are actually Alpha Double-Pluses. The best and brightest young souls can vie for an A+*, which is worth 4.67.
The whole point of grades and GPAs is to give some standard of comparison. And when using that standard to compare students across different schools (which may or may not be possible in the first place), you certainly can’t use a system where the maximum potential GPA is varied school to school. Are we going to end up with a GPA arms race? Some other school comes up with the A+++☺? Soon everyone is gunning for double-digit GPAs? Who the hell knows. I’m just hoping that the term “A-plus-asterisk” student will enter the lexicon.
