Answer: Real valuable.
Perennial question for Ivy-aimed high-schoolers is “which is better an A in a regular course or B in an AP course?”
Admission officers always say “Take the AP course and get an A in it”.
Easier said than done sometimes.
Fast forward to college and b-school admissions.
If you want to get into a highly ranked b-school, Is it better to get average grades in hard courses at an academically challenging college …. or high grades in easier courses at an easier or grade-inflated school?
Here’s the answer …
Based on some recent research, the WSJ offers up an M.B.A. admission tip: Always go for an “easy A”.
According to a research report published in the journal PLOS ONE …
Business-school applicants with a high undergraduate grade-point average — even those who attended schools identified as practicing grade inflation — are more likely to be admitted than those who performed slightly less well amid tougher grading standards.
“Experts take high performance as evidence of high ability” but don’t consider how easy it is to achieve that performance.”
In other words, an applicant with a 3.6 GPA might wow the admissions office, even if the average student in that person’s graduating class finished with a 3.7.
The applicant who managed a 3.4 in a class whose average hovered closer to 3.2, however, might not make the cut.
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“Admissions officers claim that their years of experience reviewing applications given them a good sense of which schools tend to churn out A students and which actually give average students a middle C.”
But, do they actually use that information?
In one experiment, admissions officers evaluated nine fictional business-school applicants from schools identified as being of similar quality but with different grading standards.
Even after acknowledging that other students worked harder to earn their high marks, the reviewers still admitted students with inflated grades at a higher rate.
In another study considered more than 30,000 recent applicants to elite business schools, and again found that those from more lenient undergraduate institutions — determined by measuring average GPAs at those schools — had a better shot at acceptance than did those who attended more rigorous schools.
What’s going on?
It’s called “fundamental attribution error” or “correspondence bias”.
“Experts take high performance as evidence of high ability” but don’t consider how easy it is to achieve that performance.
How to correct for the known and recurring bias?
The researchers suggested scrapping raw GPA scores and using only consider “relative performance data” … e.g. class ranks or percentiles … but, they doubt any schools will do that since, for average admitted GPA is part of the –schools’ rankings.
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Also according to the study, fundamental attribution error or correspondence bias, are present in the corporate world as well.
In a related experiment, researchers asked 129 business executives to evaluate fictional candidates for promotion to a senior management position at an airline, based on the on-time flight performance at airports under their command.
Those who boasted high on-time rates were ranked as stronger candidates, even if their airports already had efficient schedules before they took over.
Those who improved the on-time numbers at airports with historically lower rates weren’t rewarded for their hard work.
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I say: avoid the temptation to take the easy route.
OK, maybe going for the easy A in the easy place works short-run on a “transactions basis” – e.g. acceptance into a program.
But, eventually you have to compete with the folks who got the hard Bs in the hard places.
They’ll be more “substantial” and battle-tested.
So, good luck.
The Homa Files 
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