I will not deny it. The following is a rant regarding the exaggerated hype surrounding the grade point average. Let it further be known that without giving details, my personal GPA is good, and so this analysis is not of bitter origins, but of contempt for perpetual errors in judgment made mostly by students, who act simultaneously as executioner and victim in a cycle of over-inflated worry. While measured to the 100th decimal place, the GPA is neither an objective nor refined assessment of academic performance
The different combinations of majors, classes, professors, and teaching assistants that exist within the thousands of universities in the United States are infinite. This fact alone should serve to demonstrate the subjectivity surrounding the GPA.

Made most famous by its exposure at Harvard University, grade inflation present at select schools around the country is a clear sign of the lack of uniformity among the "graders" themselves. Aside from major differences in policy among institutional grading systems, the general inflation or deflation of grades should serve to trivialize the GPA.
In January 2002, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers sat down at a highly demanded question and answer session regarding grade inflation at his historically elite institution. While defending the abnormally high amount of As given to students in the previous year, he admitted that he was concerned by the percentage of students graduating with honors in that year; an outrageous 91 percent.

In any discussion between students of varying majors and fields of study, it becomes abundantly clear that GPAs should be held to different standards depending on these factors. While science classes at Brandies are invariably curved and scaled, the same cannot be said for many courses in the humanities.

As Jonathan Waldstreicher '05 said: "In every science class I have taken at Brandeis, the professor has created a curve with a clear intention of giving a certain amount of As, Bs and Cs. My performance has never been tested on its own, rather, it has been tested as compared to that of the other students in the class."

So analyze the objectivity of the GPA within each school of study on its own, you say? As is well known by the average Brandeis slacker, this is no way to extract the massive amounts of subjectivity that hide behind veils of digits and decimals. Within the humanities at Brandeis, there are scores of classes, including upper level courses, which are exceptionally easier than others.

Indeed, among the students of many universities there even exists a list of A-inducing courses to choose from. I myself have indulged in such courses to lighten a five course load one semester and to study for the LSAT's during another.

After a few semesters spent in college, the non-telling nature of the grade point average becomes clear firsthand. While one student may elect to enroll in a challenging course-load, another may, equally legitimately, elect to take a schedule lighter than the paper his transcript is printed on.

But alas, with all this analysis, I have not even touched on the king of subjectivity, the master and commander of all pliability, the emperor of all GPA malleability, the loved, the hated, the begrudged, the worshiped, the ever changing, arbitrarily assigned teaching assistant.

While professors often give strict grading advise to TAs, the mere fact that there could be multiple TA sections within a given course creates a massive element of subjectivity involved. Some students may be privy to a more lenient grader; others may have been alphabetically assigned to a harsh grader. And though it is taboo, the friendships between TAs and students often serve to further shade the grading process.

With all the subjectivity laced into the final digits of one's GPA, it is no wonder that this figure often falls second or third on the list of credentials sought out by our country's graduate schools. Indeed, as a soon-to-be candidate for law school, I am quickly learning that the three years of work that have been subsumed by my GPA will be trumped by a three hour long LSAT test that I will take this June.

While it may seem so, my message is certainly not for students to neglect their work and ignore their GPA. What I am posing, however, is that before one is impressed or depressed by a their own GPA or that of those of their peers, they should take into account all of the situational factors that make up this highly subjective number.