Walking on the Corner a few weeks ago, next to the campus of the University of Virginia, I overheard a very memorable conversation between two young gentleman that I presumed were students at Mr. Jefferson’s University. In the particularly incisive tidbit that I caught, the one guy said to his friend, “It hurts too much to bite it by the bottle cap so the dude just bit the whole bottle in half.” I had never seen these two people before and my impression of them was, “Wow, these guys are idiots,” though I am amazed by both the audacity and tooth strength of the bottle-biter.

I’m sure they made a better sales-pitch on their college applications in order to get into U.Va because I feel that many members of the second decile at Western, a group often snubbed by U.Va admissions officers, have more to offer to the school, and to society as a whole for that matter, than these guys do.

I use U.Va as an example of college admission in general because it is the closest of our nation’s highly selective and prestigious universities. From what I understand, the way U.Va admissions generally works is as follows: every year their incoming class consists roughly of the top ten percent of Virginia public high school students, along with private school graduates and out-of-state applicants of course. So, from a very strong high school like Western, the top ten percent is almost guaranteed admission. Also, someone in the second decile from Western has a much higher chance of admission than someone outside the top decile at an average public school.

But as we all know, the difference between first and second decile can be just one 89.4. And that fateful .1% could have been just one missed assignment. The evaluation of one student’s performance cannot be expressed numerically.

Any mathematician and possibly even George Bush would be able to tell you that 90 is greater than 89. So would your guidance counselor. Mathematical convention also dictates that 89 is greater than an 88 but mathematical convention does not apply to your high school transcript. On your transcript, a B is a B. What I’m trying to say is that the 5-point grade average scaling system is flawed. Albemarle County should adopt the system that they use in some school districts in which students have a GPA on a scale of 100. Though this system is still numerical, some of the arbitrariness is removed. In this system, the cumulative scores from each class with extra points added to Honors/AP courses are averaged, creating a number between 1 and 100. These school systems acknowledge that 89 is in fact greater than 88. Makes sense right?

As I was saying the current system that Albemarle County and most of the country uses is flawed. It’s all arbitrary, man. Down with the system! Now excuse me while I go bite a bottle or something.

Note from the editor: This article was originally published in the Spring 2013 issue and is now being reposted  because the topic is currently an important topic of debate for the Albemarle County Public School system.