For most students, when asked what someone’s GPA stands for, the most common answers include “the average of all your grades”, and “how smart someone is”. The first statement is inherently true, as GPA stands for “grade point average”, but how well does the second statement hold? Does someone’s GPA accurately represent how smart someone is? A value for someone’s GPA comes from how well they do in all their individual courses, whether that be maths, english, history, science, etc. The average from all these classes is then weighted then checked to see how well a student is able to perform on average, in any class. Yet is that testing how smart a student is? I personally, would argue no. Your GPA only represents how well you fair in a variety of classes, not necessarily how smart you are. In what class gauges your ability to approach unknown variables and seemingly connect them in creative ways? The Remote Associates Test is a test that is commonly used in order compare different students and their ability to be creative against one another, yet in what class is this test commonly used? As a reader, have you ever heard of this test until now? The test gives 3 words that are associated by a 4th, and as the test taker you are to try and figure out the 4th word. For example, the 3 given words could be light/break/dream, and you would have to figure out the 4th word. Give up? The 4th word is ‘day’ (Daylight, Daybreak, Daydream). Tests like these in my opinion really do test an individual’s creativity, and it baffles me that tests like these aren’t used more often in school to accurately determine how smart a student is.
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