Inflated GPA's due to COVID P/NP

Every sophomore kid that reaches out to me has a 4.0 or a 3.9+ GPA. I was wondering if this is uncommon or due to the fact that all of these GPA's are hyper inflated due to the option of Pass/No pass. 

This seems fucked and makes GPA's almost irrelevant in my eyes because you could've take one bs class gotten an A and passed every other class from then on. Also, this fucks the kids that have a 3.8ish despite that being a great GPA pre-covid. Any one else feel the same?

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[Comment removed by mod team]
 

GPA is very school-specific (even assuming the same major, a 4.0 at MIT is clearly not the same as a 4.0 at Brown, where over half of all grades are A's). When I was in IB, recruiting was somewhat school specific too (at least for first rounds), so you wind up getting reviewed by people who have some ability to control for the fact that at 3.5 in math may represent a stronger applicant than someone who has a higher GPA but in a softer subject.

FWIW, if you're not sandbagging your GPA, you should be. Stuff those hard classes into senior year or something.

 
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This is just my 2 cents:

Sure, obviously, if a dude throws down a 2.2 GPA, then there is a serious concern. On the other end of the spectrum, many kids at my target school who had very high GPAs cheated on every other assignment they did. But, in my book, if you have a 3.0+, know your stuff, are willing to grind it out without any complaining, and are genuinely someone who I would want to be around, then I would have no reason to ding this person. There are just too many differences in grading standards, class difficulty, and the ability to know whether someone truthfully earned their GPA to make it a strong indicator.

In this one finance class that I took, which was taught by multiple faculty members, one teacher was substantially harder than the other. I would be spending 15-20 hours a week grinding out homework assignments, while the other class (who had a different teacher) scratched their ass and took take-home tests. There was a substantial difference in average GPA between the teachers. Not to mention, spending so much time in one class dragged on my ability to perform in others. Transcripts don't include the teacher, just the class and what grade you got. After that experience, I know I can be looking at someone who "took the same classes" as me and know that they could have had a much different academic experience than I did. The point is, GPA has too much variance to make it meaningful in any way.

 

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