> There are 24,000 high schools in the US (not even considering international students) with wildly varying grading standards. You have one applicant from Podunk City High School, valedictorian with a 4.0. Is that ... good? How does it compare to the thousands of other kids with 4.0s you have applying?

Some other places in the world admit based on the Z-score for each subject, with the average and standard deviation being specific to each school. While the university might not know how one would compare to other students based on an equivalent test, they'd at least know that a particular student is in the top decile for their school in a given subject.

I don't know if it's good or bad. I don't think grades mean much either other than a feedback/signal for the student. Using them as measuring sticks for admission into exclusive clubs seems pretty broken. We should be lowering the barriers to education and the exclusive clubs that elite educational institutions demarcate.

I want more people that study calculus and higher level mathematics because it is a standard part of their education and not because it is a requirement on some test. I don't care what grade they get on their exams because if I end up working with them I'm not gonna care about the grade but the fact that they learned how to think rigorously (or at least were given the opportunity to do so without having to waste effort and energy on playing status games).