In Quebec, grades are normalized using a statistical formula that factors in how well students from your high school tend to perform in university[0]. This means an average student at an "elite" school could end up with a similar score to a top student from a weaker school.
Wow, interesting. Do students take that into account when selecting which CEGEP to attend?
I don't know how it is in Ontario now, but when I went through HS there university admissions were your top-K grades for the last couple of years and they didn't factor in which school you attended. There were no shortage of private/alternative high schools in Toronto that catered gaming that system with lax workloads and inflated grades.
I'm not sure if universities knew the origin HS at the time because applications within the province were centralized in a single system, also because there was talk at one point of making the HS known which implies it wasn't?
I don't know how it was when you were applying, but when I applied in 2018 the universities knew your HS and Waterloo was doing adjustments based on your high school.
Over the past 7 years other schools have done so as well. Waterloo's adjustment factor list got FOI'd and made public if you want to find yours.
Ok! The one I can find only goes back to 2016 and I was applying a bit before that. The grid has a lot of missing data since Waterloo probably doesn't have enough data for each cohort and HS to make a good estimate, I guess that would make a province-wide system like in Québec superior since they can adjust based on outcomes from all universities.
After seeing the list I'm kind of sad, I had the choice between two schools at 10 and 13, and chose the one with 13. A 3% difference can make or break an application in any competitive program... Well, at least it wasn't one of those schools with 20 point factor, wow.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_score