Making the Grades

The semi-annual arrival of the University's red, white and blue grade mailer usually causes trembling fingers and a stab of anxiety as students rush to uncover their rewards for a semester's worth of reading, writing and research. While attempting to read the mailer's smudged carbon letters and the attached arithmetical symbols used to appraise their performance, students' eyes invariably wander to the little box in the lower right hand corner marked GPA. The impact of that three-digit number is sure to be felt, during the search for summer internships, the graduate or professional school admissions process or the quest to find full-time employment after graduation. Psychology Professor Robert Seyfarth, who is also director of undergraduate studies in the Psychology Department, said he has seen students place increased emphasis on grades in recent years. "But it would be unfair to say that students have become more grade-grubbing without also commenting on the problem they face -- and this is that graduate admissions offices tend increasingly to base their decisions on grades and GPA," he added. "So what's a student to do?" English Professor Paul Korshin, who will lead a colloquium on education and the existence of grade inflation at the University tomorrow, said GPAs have definitely increased during his tenure here. "Possibly Penn has improved so much [that] we're getting the best students in the country," he said. "[But] we are aware that Penn is widely regarded as an easy school. There are very few low grades, and we don't know why this is true." Charges of grade inflation, and the grade system restructuring that often results, are some of the most important -- and divisive -- issues facing institutions of higher education across the country at the present time. Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brown University have relatively liberal assessment policies that have been fine-tuned through more than two decades of use. Stanford and Harvard Universities seem to be moving toward increasingly rigid systems that may make students more accountable for the quality of their work. At the University, the four undergraduate schools have also seen significant grading system changes in recent years, according to Assistant Registrar Janet Ansert. Ansert said the Wharton School and School of Nursing have only begun to utilize pluses and minuses in grading this fall. The Engineering School still does not use grading fractions, she added. "[The change] certainly makes the education more sensible for students -- why would a Wharton student be able to get a plus-minus in a College course but not in [his] own? The change is appropriate for the undergraduate experience," Ansert said. Despite the near-uniform grading scale agreement across the University, each undergraduate school maintains its own rules on the number and type of courses students can take pass/fail while also fulfilling graduation requirements. At MIT, freshmen are graded on a pass/no record basis in all of their subjects. Associate Registrar Connie Scribner said a passing grade means achievement of a C or better. "This grading system was designed to meet a variety of objectives, [including] a reduction of the stresses of the first year and the development of more mature attitudes about learning and managing one's time," she said recently. "What freshmen do receive are informal evaluations of their progress -- letter grades are not assigned." Following the first year of study, an MIT student's transcript has Ps for all of the courses he or she has passed, Scribner added. While there is no specific number of Ps necessary to be promoted to sophomore status, each student's record is reviewed by a faculty committee at the end of the term. MIT Associate Dean for Student Affairs Bonnie Walters said the pass/no record policy was implemented about 20 years ago, in response to the realization that there was "an awful lot" of pressure on first-year students. During their second semester, MIT freshmen are given "hidden grades," which are used for internal advising purposes and not notated on their transcripts, she added. While students appreciate the pass/no record grading option because of MIT's rigorous science core courses, they don't abuse the privilege. "Smart students don't blow off the freshman year because they are going to need the study skills for the remaining three years," Walters said. "Most MIT students take the freshman year very seriously. They are glad not to have the pressure of grades, but [realize] these [courses] are the building blocks of their education." For students at Brown University, however, GPA is not a cause for concern -- it's simply not calculated. Brown's move to satisfactory/no credit grading took place in 1969, a few years before MIT made the same switch. But Brown's policy, which was implemented in conjunction with the school's "new curriculum," applies to all undergraduates, according to Registrar Katherine Lewis. Under the S/NC system, a satisfactory grade is equivalent to an A, B or C, she said. Although Brown students are permitted to take an unlimited number of courses S/NC, they typically choose to take about 75 percent of their courses for a grade. Brown does not calculate GPAs, but the traditional grades which appear on students' transcripts provide "a record that speaks to the quality of their work," Lewis added. Some faculty members, however, mandate that any student who enrolls in their courses utilize the S/NC option for that course, relying on an extensive written course performance report -- rather than a letter grade -- to testify to his or her achievement. Other professors assign grades to every student in a given class -- whether they are recorded on the student's transcript or not -- to better remember individuals who may later request recommendations. The S/NC option was intended to decrease the competitiveness that often characterizes the undergraduate environment, and to allow students to experiment with courses in unfamiliar disciplines, Lewis said. "We've taken many looks at the curriculum, and there have been lots of review committees and discussions," she added. "There has never been a proposal that a majority of the faculty liked better." The faculty also provided the impetus for revolutionary grading changes at Stanford University. Approved last spring, the changes will take effect next fall. "The grading changes were of two types," Registrar Roger Printup said. "One changed some of the types of grades that are recorded, the others were related more to deadlines." By far the most controversial change was the reinstatement of a failing grade, called an NP. For the past 25 years, students who did not satisfactorily complete course requirements at Stanford received an NC, which would cause courses to disappear from their permanent records without a trace. Stanford students also had the luxury of dropping a course -- without a record of ever having enrolled -- until the last day of class, Printup added. Incompletes could be deleted from the permanent record at any time, and a course could be retaken an infinite number of times with only the most recent grade appearing on the permanent record. Stanford operates on a 10-week quarter system, Printup said, and the new rules state that the unconditional drop period will now run until week four of the quarter. Students dropping courses between the fourth and eighth weeks of the quarter will receive a W on their transcripts. After the eighth week, students must complete any course in which they are enrolled. Additionally, incompletes will convert to NPs after one year. Course retakes will only be permitted once, with the original grade being changed to RP, for repeat. "The biggest complaint about the old system was that students who were taking the large introductory science courses -- pre-meds -- found themselves in classes with students who had already taken the course," Printup said. One professor told Printup that in his large chemistry class one-third of the enrolled students were taking the course for at least a second time. "Students don't like the deadlines, and claim the new system [will make] them less willing to take risks," he added, explaining that those who favored the system before its approval were often afraid to speak out because of the strong sentiment against change espoused by leading campus organizations. Lewis agreed with Printup's assessment, but said student self-motivation does not depend on the grading options a school offers. "We advise students to experiment, find what works for [them]," she said. "There are students who feel they perform better when the pressure of a grade isn't there for them -- others say they don't work as hard [when] taking courses S/NC. We view that as part of the learning experience." Printup said faculty members were also angered when students dropped out of smaller courses based on group work late in the term, disrupting the learning process. "The faculty response [to student complaints] was that in order to do well students must commit to the courses that they're in -- if they know they can drop up to the last day of class, students don't make the commitment and don't do the work," Printup said. Change may also be on the horizon at Harvard University, said associate registrar Thurston Smith. A faculty committee at Harvard is looking at the possibility of placing the average grade given in a particular class on a student's transcript, next to the student's grade, to provide a frame of reference for persons outside the university. "Canadian universities do this -- the University of Toronto, McGill University [in Montreal]," Smith said. "But it is simply one of the many things in discussion. It is not going to be implemented anytime soon."