There’s a common assumption many students, media, and parents hold. It’s an assumption that’s flat out wrong, and only those who don’t understand how academic institutions work hold it. It runs wild in the media, in parents’ minds, and is abused by many for cheap political gain.

That assumption: that a grade percent, standing on its own, means something.

Now, I'm not sure if Arida is deliberately giving the Sun what they want to hear here, but he's not being exactly truthful. Fact of the matter is, your grade percentage is irrelevant. What does matter is where you fall compared to your peers.The Vancouver Sun recently posted an article ^[1] entitled “Want to go to UBC? You’ll need an A average”. In the article, UBC’s associate director of enrolment states “I wouldn’t have got in with my grades 20 years ago, but if 20 years ago the cutoffs had been what they are now, I would’ve worked harder and I would’ve got in.” He’s assuming that higher admission grades means one has to work harder to be admitted.

Now, I’m not sure if Arida is deliberately giving the Sun what they want to hear here, but he’s not being exactly truthful. Fact of the matter is, your grade percentage is irrelevant. What does matter is where you fall compared to your peers.

UBC tries to admit the best students it can. The province tells UBC how many domestic students it has to admit. So, UBC takes in as many applications as it can, sorts them from best to worst, and takes as many as they can.*

That’s it. A cutoff average is just UBC’s estimate to get a desired class size. It’s not some magical metric of difficulty of transferring to UBC from high school. That metric is the percentage of students admitted from the applicant pool. Counter to the picture the Sun paints, the trend in BC has been more students being admitted to university, and less students graduating from high school.

Our high schools have bumped the curve to the right, while provincial policy has shifted the z-score to the left. Despite students now needing 6 more percentage points, it’s actually easier to get in. That’s the fallacy of absolute grading.

* This is a simplified model. UBC takes in the applications and modifies them according to broad based admissions, province of origin (Alberta students get a boost ^[2]), and other considerations. With international enrolment UBC is free to do whatever.