Measure Yourself by More Than Just Your Grades

With the early cum laude list revealed just last week and midterm grades coming out a few days ago, it feels like an especially opportune time to reflect on grade point averages. Exeter is obviously a school filled with exceptional students, most of whom have learned to expect grades of A+ or A’s. However, as most students settle into their time at PEA, they learn to accept grades centered somewhere around the B+ range, with The Exonian reporting that the Class of 2017 graduated with an average GPA of 9.254 out of 11. These numbers, inflated beyond belief because vestiges of previous grading systems still remain in the E-Book with honors awarded at 8.0, high honors at 9.0, and highest honors at a 10.0, are still regarded as one of the best indicators of a student’s academic achievement. This perception even though rampant grade inflation clearly shows how subjective all of these letters and numbers truly are.

Exeter is a highly competitive school. It is extremely common for students to discuss grades, bemoaning tough classes, sharing struggles to reach this or that letter grade. And I’m not writing this op-ed to say that your GPA doesn’t matter: in fact, it’s probably one of the few numbers that people will quickly look at to try and understand how your academics are going. Still, it is quite important to put this number in perspective. Your time at Exeter is the sum of all its parts, and though it may already be cliche, the grades, especially of just one term, don’t really define you.

It can be very easy to fall into the “GPA Trap,” as a previous columnist put it, but what you must keep in mind is how relative each grade really is. The main problem I see with Exeter’s current system is how little it accounts for the difficulty of each class. In the “normal” four-point system, more difficult AP classes are graded with a maximum score of five not only to offset the difficulty of only in that class, but also the time lost that could be spent on other classes. However, Exeter’s current system makes false equivalencies, leading us to compare grades from MAT21T to those in 31X, or intro and “death” chem grades. As someone who has made both of those mistakes, I can honestly tell you that those comparisons are worthless, either leaving you with hurt feelings that result from disappointment in your own academic accomplishments or an unjustified sense of pride that comes from believing that vastly different courses can be looked at in the same light.

It’s also critical to keep in mind that each person will have differing successes in their journey to cultivate a “good” GPA due to course selection as previously noted, the luck of the draw and your personal academic strengths. As an upper who has heard quite a bit from our school’s previous two valedictorians and quite a few of those who received early cum, even for those who easily average above 10.7, there are frequent disparities between each term, especially in English. With a new lineup of teachers every term, your A in a class one term can easily be bumped to a B+/A- the next time around, justifying many students' concerns at the beginning of each term about how “easy” a teacher or course is. Your personal academic strengths also play a role in your GPA, with many of my more STEM-focused friends complaining that although there are different levels of math and science to place each student, in no such distinctions exist for the humanities.

At the end of the day, your GPA should just be a marker on your path through Exeter and not the ‘end all be all’ to aim for. While Exeter is well-known for its classes and teachers, far more significant is the people you meet here, the connections you gain, the clubs or teams you join and the fun you have. To paraphrase the words of some of my wiser friends with GPA’s higher than I can dream of, Exeter isn’t about grinding for each grade to maximize that number on your transcript. In fact, many of them have advised me to ignore my GPA completely and instead focus on taking classes that I enjoy, even if they result in some of the worst grades; because this is the time in our lives where we’ll be able to have the most fun. If you succeed in that, it is the grades that will follow.