to community college students..

frrrph
Thu, 07 Jun 2007 02:11:08 +0000

I’m already on my last quarter and heading to a transfer, but I remember the burden it was to seem like an obnoxious hassle when asking the professor to consider giving an A+ for a full score only so the transcript wouldn’t imply the A+ at a cc was my full potential (which getting an A next to it would imply, just as kids with that one or two stray B:s worry about this putting the whole of their transcript in a lesser light).

When you aim for very selective schools, the sad truth is, that’s the kind of pedantry you’re lowered to when proving your community college salt is worth the same as that of more “prestigeous” starting points. Recommendations don’t really factor in since you’d get them anyway, as you so correctly pointed out - it’s this endless stratification and pushing of the envelope to further distinguish students by miniscule point-based differences.

I just don’t believe a whole person, and all of her potential, can be crammed into numbers and plusses: yet that’s what the +/- system is encouraging professors to do even more than they already are. The principle itself is very depressing.