GPA Is Misleading

GPA is really misleading. In order to accommodate most of students, even those in gift classes, the classes can not be too hard, which can not separate really outstanding students and good ones. Also, different students take different classes and different number of classes. For example, if a superior student takes one more regular class but same number of AP classes, he/she will have a lower GPA although both students got A for all classes.

A lot of high school say they do not rank but they actually do. If all students with weighted GPA>=4.0 in the same high school are ranked as 1st and more than one of them apply to the same college, the admission officer will look at the transcripts and find out who is the real 1st. Also, high schools have to provide school profile to the colleges.

In other word, GPA does not tell everything but, unfortunately, high school ranking is based on GPA and ranking is more important than test scores like SAT.

There is one opinion I agree:

If a student has a high GPA and low test scores, he/she is not that brilliant;

If a student has a low GPA and high test scores, he/she is lazy.

I will add one more:

Since GPA and SAT are not hard enough to tell apart good students and really talented ones, a lot of times the latter may not stand out as 1st place but will be the few top ones in terms of GPA. Now it is the time to look at harder tests/competition/tournaments, like AMC/AIME/USMO, to tell the difference.