GAC06 said:
Why not have a 6.0 or a 35.0 GPA?
We had a potential of 12 total points, I think. 1-3 for Cs (minus through pluses, though they were numeric); 4-6 for Bs, and 7-9 for A's. You got 3 extra points per grade for honors classes. 7.0 meant you graduated with honors. What was weird, I guess, was that all GPA did was rank you -- as long as you passed (70 or above) a class you were good to go. I'm sure people had 1.x GPAs and graduated. Maybe even lower than that as you needed 20 credits out of 24 possible 4-year classes.
It was NOT dumbed down, just more precise. The only problem was that certain classes like foreign language received honors credit by default (or at least, what I took did) and other classes got no honors credit regardless -- including 2 I took all 4 years. Other students who chased grades took classes that gave honors credit and bypassed extra curricular activities. I wasn't "top 10" material but my selections certainly cost me 20-30 spots in class rank.
I got over it.
(Why I remember all this, I'll never know. Oh, well).
Incidentally, since we had numeric grades anyway, why we didn't just have a grade average rather than a grade POINT average, I can't answer.