TO THE college-bound high school graduate, the most critical numbers in the world are his class standing and his scores on the standardized test in current favor with college admission officers.If tnese numbers are adequate, he is admitted to col lege. Then, at most colleges, the critical number so far as his academic survival is concerned be comes his grade-point average (GPA). The cumulative GPA of a student is the single-in dex description of his success as a student. And in the name of uniformity, consistency and objectivity it has become, in many institutions, the number on which his academic destiny depends. The characteristic method of computing a stu dent's GPA is to multiply a weight value for the let ter grade earned in a course by the number of se mester hours credit allowed for the course. The sum of these products is divided by the sum of the semester hours and the resulting ratio is the GPA. A recent survey showed that 46 of the 50 state uni versities surveyed used a weighted scale of five in tervals or less. Thirty eight of the 50 used a scale with the following weightings: A = 4; B = 3; C = 2; D = 1 ; and F = 0. is widely agreed, bystatisticans, that a small number of class intervals favors convenience at the expense of accuracy; that the grouping errors inherent in the use of a scale, with few intervals, render it less precise than a scale with more inter vals. Colleges have been justly criticized for using a scale of such imprecision for such a serious pur pose. Many private schools now use a scale with a greater number of graduations for this same purpose. Princeton, for instance, uses a scale for recording passing work of fifteen categories, plus two catego ries for failing work. Kirby (1) and Stroup (2), working independently, have suggested the recording of + and grades after the five letter grades. They propose assigning val ues from F= 1 to A+ = 15 with C = 8 as an opera tionally feasible way to lengthen the scale within the framework of present teacher and student under Standing. Such a scale would allow teachers to re cord their estimates of student achievement with greater precision and thus reduce the grouping er ror in computing grade-point averages. By Kirby's estimate, the use of the fivepoint scale as opposed to the 15 point scale allows four students out of 1, 000 to gain five honor points by chance alone. Also, by chance, 20 would gain four honor points; 62 would gain three honor points; and 123 would gain two extra honor points. Re spectively, the same number of students should lose five, four, three and two honor points. Thus, by chance alone, 42 percent of the students might gain or lose two or more honor points. The implication of such probability is great. A chance gain or loss of five honor points would mean, for instance, that a student taking 15 semester hours, rather than accumulating 30 honor points for a GPA of 2. 00 (30/l5), could collect 35 honor points for a GPA of 2. 33 (35/15) or 25 honor points for a GPA of 1. 67 (25/15). If the absolute values of these differences seem small, the consequence to a borderline student certainly is not. With the prac tice of unwavering adherence of a GPA cutting line of 2.00 for academic survival, the difference be tween 1. 99 and 2.00 become critical. The argument that, It all balances out, can hardly be received with enthusiasm by those disadvantaged by the chance loss. For a student, who should have been allowed to remain in college but is dismissed because of a poor scoring instrument, there is not much conso lation in the knowledge that the same instrument erroneously permitted someone who should have been dismissed to remain.