# I apparently teach in Lake Wobegon.

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-apparently-teach-in-lake-wobegon/614981>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [March 6, 2012, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-apparently-teach-in-lake-wobegon/614981 "2012-03-06T22:53:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DadWagonDriver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/edb3f5/32.png) [@DadWagonDriver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DadWagonDriver)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2012, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-apparently-teach-in-lake-wobegon/614981/1 "2012-03-06T22:53:21Z")

</div>

Today in my classes, my students were registering for their classes for next year. To do so, the counselors gave them each a copy of their transcript.

A girl asked me, “Mr. Lax, how good is a 3.76 GPA?”

I replied, “Wow, that’s really good. Keep it up and you should be in great shape when you graduate in two years!”

Then she asked, “What’s this ‘81 of 356’ mean?”

I looked. It’s her class rank.

A kid with a 3.76 is barely even in the top quartile of her grade.

I guess all our kids are above average here.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Uber\_the\_Goober](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/58956e/32.png) [@Uber\_the\_Goober](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Uber_the_Goober)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2012, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-apparently-teach-in-lake-wobegon/614981/2 "2012-03-06T23:34:53Z")

</div>

Just chiming in to say - I get it.

😃

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Sarabellum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sarabellum/32/3492_2.png) [@Sarabellum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sarabellum)\
**Post date:** [March 6, 2012, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-apparently-teach-in-lake-wobegon/614981/3 "2012-03-06T23:40:06Z")

</div>

Seems to me that when I was in high school, certain classes had a possible rating of 5.0, thus you had kids with GPAs higher than 4.0. Making a 3.7 pretty mediocre, comparatively.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![DadWagonDriver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/edb3f5/32.png) [@DadWagonDriver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DadWagonDriver)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-apparently-teach-in-lake-wobegon/614981/4 "2012-03-07T00:36:43Z")

</div>

That’s still true, but it’s restricted to AP classes. I teach sophomores, so they don’t have that opportunity yet.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wolfman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a8b319/32.png) [@wolfman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfman)\
**Post date:** [March 7, 2012, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-apparently-teach-in-lake-wobegon/614981/5 "2012-03-07T02:08:00Z")

</div>

I was reading some article about a student who had a 6.7 GPA. I knew about the slow inflation above 4, but I had no perspective what 6+ even meant. My first thought was that maybe it was out of 10, and wasn’t that good. The I saw she was valedictorian, so I was back to having no idea what it meant again.