School weighting and averages?

[tyuo9980]

I've heard that universities will scale your marks according to the rep of your high school, but they deny any kind of school weighting.

What exactly is going on?

Also how much will the AIF and contests affect your admission average?

[Tony]

some schools inflate their grades more than others, so it would make sense to somehow normalize those marks to compare them... the numbers I've heard being mentioned is up to 10 extra (or less?) percentage points from the school/AIF/contests, but there has never been any source for it, so it might have been just made up.

[mirhagk]

My teachers have all told us that the marks are normalized using the student's averages from the first year of university compared to the high school marks, but I can't be sure because I've never seen any of the weighting formulas.

I really hope it's true, because I know some schools in my city where the average kid has high eighties, and if you know how to read you basically have 90% already. I think that there should be standardized grade 12 exams for university purposes.

[Sur_real]

I've also heard of this being done but strangely, I cannot recall where :/

McGill apparently does this (well, sort of), they just give Ontario students higher admission average cutoffs since there's no standardized testing here.
Source: http://www.fims.uwo.ca/newmedia2006/default.asp?id=424 (old but I can't find any newer sources)

UWaterloo is really rigorous in their admission process (pushes the fact that they do "Individual selection" and is serious about the AIF) so I'll be surprised if they don't do school weighting

[mirhagk]

waterloo should just go ahead and make tests that are curriculum focused and standardized. They could make them required for admission.

[tyuo9980]

mirhagk @ Thu Mar 08, 2012 10:10 pm wrote:

waterloo should just go ahead and make tests that are curriculum focused and standardized. They could make them required for admission.

if tests and exams were to be standardized, it would be through the school board, not just individual universities.

[mirhagk]

A university would have a much easier time starting it then the school board would. I agree, the control should lie in the hands of the school board, but to start, a university doing it would be great.