Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute suggests one of the possible consequences of excellent students having a tougher time getting into top schools–a phenomenon that appears to be on the rise, judging from available data: “If kids with perfect records have a hard time getting into top schools, high school teachers will face increasing pressure to inflate the grades of their better students. The top 20 percent of a typical graduating class will have near-perfect grades, and the universities will have a hard time telling who’s who.”