Everybody gets a gold star - 4 place gets a trophy too....

From an ol'guy's view, and thinking back on "grades" from the 1960s, I would agree.

I think our HS Valedictorian had a 3.8 or 3.9, class of '65...most of us had Bs & Cs,
with a few A minuses and Ds tossed in.

Now, the typical HS PoohBah has a 4.8 or something, and even they are often on the
wait list for Harvard, et al.

In the U, way back "then", GPAs were chased at the ~3.0 level; now it seems if a kid
doesn't have a 4.00 or better he/she is relegated to the ditch digging seminars and is
held in shame by their peers.

Maybe the "competition" is different today; I suspect I could barely compete...

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A lot of this has to do with parental expectations and even the demographics and school background.

Where I went to high school, everything was ultra-competitive, and the standard "quantitative" measures of ability were sky-high. My SAT score of 2170 (out or 2400) was on the low-end compared to most of my colleagues and my SAT II scores were slightly below the "smart kid average" as well. It doesn't mean that the whole school was this way, but a large number of kids and their parents expected As and nothing less.

At the University, everything is a bit different, because the student body is widely dispersed and much larger. I'm not a straight A student, and nor do I expect myself to be. I put in an honest effort, and whatever grade I receive is what I receive, end of story. Given the cut-throat nature of my high school, the academic transition was well.......easy. Then again, I'm not that "in tune" with what kids might expect in college, so it's hard to say. I do think that a B-/B/B+ is expected for kids who put in a genuine effort.

I think that people don't get A's where I go to school. I know that I do my homework pretty solidly, and had some shit professors first term who couldn't teach if their life depended on it, and there don't even have a solid B. However, this semester is much better, just annoying "busy work" and crap like that. Taking classes that interest me and of things I'm good at makes life much better. (Half my schedule is french, then political science and communications versus Math, the most overcomplicated phys.ed class EVER and literature. yuck-o) A's are definitely not "given out" and most students here work hard for B's.

That said, my "lowly" 91 in high school left me as one of the "retarded kids". Not even a fookin' A, you needed a 104 to be in the top 10%.