"M.B.A. Admission Tip: Always Go for an Easy 'A'"

Kind of depressing for anyone who believes in the idea of merit (WSJ):

In one experiment, 23 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. [...]

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.

Though it does suggest a solution, which apparently applies as much to business as it does for admissions offices: "Sam Swift, a postdoctoral fellow at Haas and the lead researcher, says the solution is to bar decision makers from ever seeing the raw scores and only present to them relative performance data."