A questionnaire on grading systems was sent to the 287 members of the Council of Graduate Schools. Of the 240 responses, 127 indicated that they used systems other than the A-F traditional system, either in part or in toto. Other systems used include pass/fail, satisfactory/unsatisfactory, pass/no credit, and some variations of the A-F traditional…

The impetus for modifying or eliminating the A-F grading system has come primarily from students. Faculty reaction has been more one of bowing to pressure than that of a carefully considered response. Arguments for and against the traditional grading systems each have merit. It seems illogical, however, to repeat on the graduate level a grading…

A questionnaire on the pass-fail grading system was sent to the 276 deans whose institutions belong to the Council of Graduate Schools in the United States. Of the 230 deans who responded, 214 preferred to evaluate a student for admission to graduate or professional study on the basis of a letter graded transcript, 7 preferred a pass-fail…

Part I of this report presents a survey of grading practices used by higher education institutions in New York. After reviewing current bulletins or catalogues of all the institutions, questionnaires were mailed to 226 requesting information on prior grading practices and on any recent changes in these practices. Results, based on an 80% response,…

Dissatisfaction with traditional grading practices has been increasing steadily during the past few years. Although alternative methods have been used by many institutions, there will be no commonly accepted system until some agreement has been reached on the goals of graduate level instruction and grading. There is no evidence to indicate that…

The Santa Cruz campus of the University of California has been using pass-fail grading coupled with written evaluations of the student's performance since it opened in 1965. The only exceptions to the pass-fail system are in nonintroductory undergraduate courses in biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics in which students may select the letter…

There is increasing protest regarding the validity and usefulness of current methods of evaluating students' abilities and achievements. With higher education accessible to the masses, increased competition for college, graduate school, and good jobs has made the attainment of "good grades" more important than ever. Yet the appearance of…

Traditional grading was replaced with the Honors-Pass-Fail (H-P-F) grading system in graduate education courses at Herbert H. Lehman College in the fall 1971 semester. The purpose of that action was to determine if the H-P-F system might differentiate more effectively between exceptional and average student achievement. The general findings of the…

The purpose of the present study is to examine the effects of nontraditional satisfactory/unsatisfactory (or pass/fail) grading on graduate admissions and on financial award decisions by surveying each department offering graduate programs at the State University of New York at Albany. Some differential effects of the nontraditional versus…

Article discusses recent study by the Academic Long Range Planning Committee of the College of St. Catherine, in which questionnaires were sent to admissions offices of 143 graduate schools in the U.S. in an attempt to measure their attitudes towards nongraded transcripts. Reaction was generally unfavorable. (JB)

An Honors-Pass-Fail (H-P-F) grading system was introduced experimentally to replace A-B-C-F grading in all graduate education courses. H-P-F was more effective than A-B-C-F grading in distinguishing between exceptional and average student achievement. The percentage of highest possible grades declined from 50 percent A's to about 25 percent H…

Surveyed are undergraduate grading practices and their impact on graduate admissions. A diversity of reasons are offered by the respondent universities and institutes for the dramatic rise in undergraduate grade-point averages since the mid-1960's. These speculations focus on changes in student and faculty behavior, innovations in grading systems,…