In British Columbia, we used to have grade 12 &quot;provincial exams&quot; which were centrally set and graded; these were worth 40% of a student&#x27;s final grade, vs. 60% for the school portion of their mark.  Even though the majority of a student&#x27;s final grade was set by the school, having uniformly graded exams made it very obvious when a school awarded consistently generous marks.  (And it was useful for other analyses too: One interesting pattern was that female students taught by female teachers consistently out-performed on schoolwork compared to examinations, while female students with male teachers and male students with female teachers showed no such pattern.)<p>About a decade ago, the provincial government decided to scrap most of the exams, and now it&#x27;s much harder to assess incoming students&#x27; grades; I&#x27;ve heard rumours of increasing gaps between schools&#x27; grading practices from several sources, along with &quot;black books&quot; with per-school &quot;adjustment factors&quot; -- but I doubt anyone would admit to these publicly.  When it comes to awarding scholarships (I am my alma mater&#x27;s alumni representative on that committee), I now rely very little on grades but instead look primarily for more qualitative facets: Has the student done anything exceptional (took 6 AP courses in grade 9; won an olympic medal; travels the world performing with major symphony orchestras; qualified flight instructor who runs a flying school; has a research paper published in a major journal), and whether they can articulate a vision for why they want to attend university (&quot;I&#x27;ve always been interested in learning&quot; is better than nothing; &quot;it&#x27;s what people do after finishing high school&quot; is pathetic; a story about the profound impact of a relative dying of cancer and how it shaped everything they&#x27;ve done since, good).<p>I&#x27;d love to see standardized testing return, but there&#x27;s a prisoner&#x27;s dilemma: If one institution requires students to write extra exams, the number of applications they receive will drop sharply.  And getting all the universities to cooperate when they&#x27;re very much competing for the top students... well, that&#x27;s not likely to happen any time soon.