[cperciva]

In British Columbia, we used to have grade 12 "provincial exams" which were centrally set and graded; these were worth 40% of a student's final grade, vs. 60% for the school portion of their mark. Even though the majority of a student's final grade was set by the school, having uniformly graded exams made it very obvious when a school awarded consistently generous marks. (And it was useful for other analyses too: One interesting pattern was that female students taught by female teachers consistently out-performed on schoolwork compared to examinations, while female students with male teachers and male students with female teachers showed no such pattern.)

About a decade ago, the provincial government decided to scrap most of the exams, and now it's much harder to assess incoming students' grades; I've heard rumours of increasing gaps between schools' grading practices from several sources, along with "black books" with per-school "adjustment factors" -- but I doubt anyone would admit to these publicly. When it comes to awarding scholarships (I am my alma mater's alumni representative on that committee), I now rely very little on grades but instead look primarily for more qualitative facets: Has the student done anything exceptional (took 6 AP courses in grade 9; won an olympic medal; travels the world performing with major symphony orchestras; qualified flight instructor who runs a flying school; has a research paper published in a major journal), and whether they can articulate a vision for why they want to attend university ("I've always been interested in learning" is better than nothing; "it's what people do after finishing high school" is pathetic; a story about the profound impact of a relative dying of cancer and how it shaped everything they've done since, good).

I'd love to see standardized testing return, but there's a prisoner's dilemma: If one institution requires students to write extra exams, the number of applications they receive will drop sharply. And getting all the universities to cooperate when they're very much competing for the top students... well, that's not likely to happen any time soon.

[jbangert]

this style of evaluating people (what interesting things have you done) is quite problematic at that age, and forces students to do things for show from early one. I know there are a lot of people who do really exciting things even at a young age (e.g. Running a flight school or competing in the olympics), but if that becomes the sole way of grading/comparing students/getting scholarships, we create pressure to do impressive-sounding things, which leads to the weird US college application system (days filled with extracurriculars, taking classes early, the essay-writing industry, etc.). IMHO, it is much preferable if the 'front door' into elite schools and scholarships exists based on grades and the like( of course, there should be flexibility for admitting extraordinarily accomplished people -- there just shouldn't be any shame in getting in just by hard work/studying/general smarts, so you can be honest about your successes).

[cperciva]

Right, I wish grades were reliable enough that we could put more weight on them.

The "days filled with extracurriculars" problem you mention is why I generally ignore "volunteered at senior's home / hospital / soup kitchen / etc." activities. When I say that I'm looking for exceptional achievements, a large part of what I mean is "has this student done something which nobody could or would conceivably do just for the sake of boosting their chances at getting a scholarship?"