The New Grading System: A Second Look

The decision for numeric grading boils down to one thing: accurately representing our effort. If you want to increase your GPA, anything you do can help. In the past grading system, if you had a low 80, you would have to raise it all the way to an A to change anything about your GPA. As Harper mentioned, “every point counts,” but unlike him, I think it’s a good thing. It means that you will be rewarded your work in every class. In the current system, if you have an 80, and you raise it to an 85, that will help your overall GPA, but in the past, all that effort would be futile because, whether it’s an 89.44 or a 79.55, you would still get a B on your transcript. If you have all 89s, for example, you shouldn’t feel like you might as well have gotten 80s. You worked hard and you deserved that increase, so your GPA should reflect it.

Overall, this has the effect of globalising your grades. In a liberal arts education, I think that’s necessary. It says “every class matters.” Gone is the hopeless sentiment “well, I’m not going to climb to an A, so there’s no use in trying in this class.” In the long run, that sentiment keeps you from progressing, so that you can raise your grade in future assessments. If your grades slip on one class, you can no longer ignore it. You’re more likely to go to office hours so that you can prevent it from happening again. In the past, you would have simply ignored it, since it didn’t change your letter grade, and you would continue on without a real understanding of the topic on which you were assessed. For classes where heavy cumulative knowledge is a requisite, like Latin, Spanish, or Greek, the long term results of not understanding a concept can be devastating. Small steps like going to office hours will reduce stress on assessments to come.

The community at Latin has never been about the grades to me. We have Approbation, sure, but I recognise that’s a necessary incentive for a lot of people. Now that our grades better represent our effort, it’s arguably an even more effective incentive. But what I love is the emphasis on members of the community that stand out, regardless of their GPA. The Cicero Award, the Eureka Award, etc. We acknowledge creativity, curiosity, and pure determination whether it’s in the classroom, or in an extracurricular.

It’s only natural to develop strong opinions when things affect us that we never agreed to. But in the end, our magistri and college officers only have our best interests in mind, and we can trust them to do the right thing for us, even if that’s not immediately obvious to us when they first do it.