Davidson is doing a slight twist to the P/F option. Courses are graded but you have the option to switch any or all to P/F all the way through finals and even beyond. So, basically, your grades can only help you this semester. Keep them if you want to, or switch to Pass. You can switch this semester’s grades to pass at any point up until you graduate.
What I like about this is it provides incentive to keep students engaged in classes right now so that makes higher quality discussions, etc.
My D is grad school bound so she’s def. still working hard. She has a stable home environment w/ everything she needs; not everyone is in the same situation.
Michigan is doing something similar in engineering. You get a pass grade with a Covid marker but you can find out what your grade is and “unlock” the grade. So it can only help your GPA. But I like the way your school is doing it better but basically the same end result
I think the push back on the Davidson and Michigan model is that it still helps the kids who have a good, stable, healthy family life to go back to for this semester. If a law school is comparing two Davidson kids’ apps and one is showing As for this semester and one has “passed” their classes with Covid-19 asterisk, how do they judge that? It just looks better for the student who got the As. What if that other student is in a stressful situation at home by no fault of their own - has to take care of younger sibs who are home while mom goes out to work in a job where she might get sick? Or the student is flat out worried about the family getting enough food on the table since so many jobs have been lost?
That’s why some schools have decided on a C/NC system for this semester. Even the wording is different. It’s not “pass” which insinuates that the student got a D or higher. It’s just “credit” meaning the student did the work required to get credit for the course.
If I had a student who had the option, no doubt I would be making him take the grade but I feel awful for kids who are struggling at home.
@homerdog – You raise a good point. I’ve been thinking that way for high school students b/c we have about 25% of our students who receive free-reduced lunch, but you’re right it does apply in college too and does confer an advantage to students who are in a stable situation at home.
I’m guessing when it comes down to it, grad schools may have to just drop this semester’s grades for consideration for all students regardless in order to make ‘apples to apples’ comparisons and for the equity concerns you raise. Because transcripts are electronic I know there’s a way they can do that across the board and re-calculate GPAs.
Employers, however, won’t do that, but I don’t think GPA is as big a factor for many hiring decisions – but it does come in play for some jobs.
Yea I guess it’s a little strange. If you keep all your grades Pass then most likely didn’t get an A
But you can convert any grade to “help” your GPA. No grade can hurt your GPA . Heh, Michigan is a very tough school. Maybe this is a little motivation to put in the extra work and really try for that A. My son’s in engineering is being loaded up with group project work and they are piling on homework. He thinks it is more work now then when the classes where “live”. Personally, I’m good with that… Lol… Keep them home studying is better then being outside on the streets…
Another article about disparities- this one focuses on my daughter’s school. As for grading, I wish Haverford had done C/nc across the board for everyone, instead of giving kids the options to uncover their grades until September. It would be more fair that way, I think.
@AlmostThere2018 I guess, selfishly, I just have to be confident that coming from a place like Bowdoin would help S19 in the job market and one semester of freshman grades being absent (especially when there’s no choice) won’t do any damage whatsoever. Hopefully, he will have three more semesters of grades (all of soph year and half of junior) before he applies for that important rising senior internship. At that point, looking back to one semester of C/NC two years prior will hopefully not be an issue at all.
I’ve been trying to find a list of schools that are doing exclusive C/NC but can’t only find stories here and there that mention grading policies. I think Harvard, Stanford, and MIT are now C/NC with no grades allowed to be uncovered.
Northwestern is a pass/no pass which seems the same to me as credit or no credit. Pass threshold is a D. Students can retroactively go back and covert the last quarter P/NP as well.
Chem E department at Purdue is basically telling students to take their letter grades. They have until the day before finals to decide if they want P/F but D doesn’t think they’ll have projected grades because so much depends on the final exam. The Pass threshold, a C-, isn’t high enough for those courses that require a C or C+ to move on.
Is it true what I heard that pass/fail credits don’t transfer between institutions? In otherwords, if a student chooses to transfer in the future, the credits earned from pass/fail will not be counted. Someone please give me some insight. If that’s the Case, it would be undesirable for many students.
I think colleges should give students the choice of letter grades or pass/fail (or similar) option. One shoe doesn’t fit all. Some students will prefer one option over the other. Why deprive them of the choice?
@guava123. I think it’s going to be very institution dependent and maybe some schools will ease up on their policies based on the circumstances. I heard Harvard Med School will allow potential applicants to have P/F courses on their transcripts for this semester.
Your son will be fine. Employers will “remember” this year. No one is holding this against any student. But it comes down to how involved you are on campus and other things he does to separate him out from the pack . Lots you can do at home BTW. My son put on a webinar/conference that should of been his second one live on Zoom and slack yesterday. All 8 speakers and 6 hours including lunch break. It worked out fine actually with over 300 people and being online attracted people from literally around the world.
Kids will just have to be more creative if things don’t normalize.
I would also think exceptions will take place. Kinda hard to give someone a penalty for a pandemic. Like getting into colleges I think maybe what students did on campus might come into play a bit more.
~95% of law schools only care about the cumulative GPA & LSAT. (They accept plenty of Brown grads with a bunch of Passes on their transcripts.)
When my D applied to grad schools, she just self-reported her GPA (and usually major GPA), and attached a pdf of her transcript(s). There was not re-calculation. Of course, if admitted, she had to submit an official transcript(s) from her undergrad school(s).
of course, but that just puts more pressure on the STEM courses with grades, particularly Organic Chem.
Transfer credit, with or without grades, has always been college dependent. That said, D-level work for for full Pass/Credit is not exactly a strong selling point. (Can’t for the life of me understand why colleges would set the bar below a C-.)
Major will be much more important than one semester of Pass.
Depends on the policy of the college the credits are intended to be transferred to. That college can set its own policy for P grades in transfer credit, and it may depend on what the threshold for P is at the college the course was taken at.
I write today with an update I know many of you have been eagerly awaiting: what summer will look like on our campus. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we adapt to this extraordinary and ever-changing situation.
Guided by current public health and safety recommendations, our plan for summer 2020 is as follows:
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“Keep them if you want to, or switch to Pass. You can switch this semester’s grades to pass at any point up until you graduate.”
The issue there though, at least for grad schools that look at transcripts, is that if you have 4 classes with a grade and one without, they’ll know the Pass was probably not a good grade. I agree that for employers, it will help, they just look at gpa and maybe a few courses to see what you’ve taken.
I have a kid at UMich. I like the “unlock GPA” method. That way, the kids with high grades and continue to work hard thru Covid-19 and finalize those high grades aren’t potentially penalized for law schools, med school, graduate school, etc.
I talked with my daughter about this - even though she has the option of P/NC or grade at a class-by-class level, for med school applications I can imagine them seeing all courses in semester as “P” being that the “school just mandated it due to the virus.” But a mix of P’s and letter grades will probably be seen as " i guess you weren’t doing too well in those classes you decided to keep as a P". Luckily for her she gets to decide after finals… but she’s working hard and doesn’t think she’ll have any reason to take a P over a letter grade anyway
