USG Letter to the Faculty

Dear Members of the Faculty,

As Princeton undergraduates, we are committed to holding ourselves to the highest academic standards. The Princeton undergraduate experience is among the most demanding in the world, and we fully agree that Princeton grades should be understood (in the words of the grading policy statement) “as rigorous markers of academic performance in an extremely challenging program of undergraduate study."

In order for students to produce their best work under the grading policy, there needs to be a clear understanding of the expectations and standards that characterize quality work. In this way, grading may serve the purpose expressed as the ultimate goal of the grading policy—to make formal assessment more meaningful and provide greater feedback for students. If detailed critical feedback is provided, students will know where they are succeeding and where there is room for improvement.

Students also need members of the faculty to be clear about how the grading expectations will affect their courses. The grading expectations presume that faculty members will grade in a more rigorous, discriminating fashion; if that happens, it should turn out to be the case, over time, that about 35 percent of the grades in undergraduate courses in each department are going to be A’s. From the grading policy, students understand that Princeton has rigorous grading expectations, but not grading quotas; student work is supposed to be graded according to its own quality. Therefore, students who do A-quality work should expect to receive A-level grades.

The student body is committed to holding itself to the high expectations set forth by the grading policy. Students get the wrong impression, however, when professors begin the semester by telling students, “No matter what happens, only four of you will get A’s in this course,” or “You should know up front that only 35 percent of you can get A grades.” Grading practices such as these seem to be at odds with the spirit of the grading policy. Moreover, they stifle intellectual curiosity and exchange among students; if students are thrown into a competition with their classmates for the handful of A’s that professors are able to give, they will try to stay ahead of their fellow students rather than learning from them and sharing ideas with them in the collective pursuit of knowledge. No good can come of making grading a zero-sum game in which students hesitate to clarify a concept for a fellow student because it might cost them a good grade.

The faculty has made great strides toward restoring meaning to the grades that students earn and making grading standards more consistent across departments. We hope that students and faculty will be mindful, however, that the grading policy’s goal for departments does not reduce to a strict 35 percent cap on A grades for individual courses, and that students who produce A-quality work deserve an A-level grade, regardless of the performance of other students. As students, we are well prepared to be held to rigorous standards, but we ask to be evaluated on the basis of the quality of the work that we alone produce, so that we may learn in an environment that encourages us to engage intellectually with our peers.

Respectfully submitted,

The Undergraduate Student Government