Editorial: Push for shadow grading

While midterm week is an academically challenging time for all Princeton students, it is usually particularly stressful for freshmen. The uncertainty that results from their inexperience with college academics only serves to supplement the high levels of stress that all students feel at this point in the semester. Furthermore, unlike upperclassmen, freshmen lack previous semesters of Princeton courses that might serve as preparation for their current work. The University therefore ought to implement a shadow-grading system in its assessment of academic performance during the fall of freshman year. Under this system, professors would privately inform students of the grade they received in the class, but that grade would not be publicly available on transcripts and would not affect students’ grade point averages. The only public reflection of the work done in the fall of freshman year would be a pass or fail marking.

Students often enter Princeton with a lack of information about their own skills and the demands of certain courses. They may have been, for example, the most mathematically gifted students in their high schools, but they may only belatedly realize that they are not actually qualified for MAT 215: Analysis in a Single Variable. The shadow-grading system would enable students to assess their own academic abilities during freshman fall, thereby enabling them to make smarter enrollment choices without unnecessarily tarnishing their GPAs in the following semesters. This, in turn, would encourage the academic exploration that is such a fundamental part of the Princeton intellectual experience. Knowing that there is no crippling grade awaiting their freshman transcript, students may well pursue courses that might otherwise have been overly intimidating.

Shadow grading would also compensate for the disparities in the high-school experiences of freshmen students. Some of us come from storied private high schools, while others come from schools that fail to adequately prepare their students for the rigors of Princeton. Withholding grades during freshman fall would enable all students to achieve a greater measure of parity, at least in terms of their experience with Princeton work, before their grades become part of their public transcript.

This policy would not discourage work or deprive courses of their didactic value. Princeton students are notoriously industrious, and it would be inappropriately cynical to assume that their work ethics would decline substantially in the absence of publicly recorded grades. Additionally, because grades would still be available to students, they would retain their value as a feedback mechanism.

It should be noted that some exceptions would have to be made in order to successfully implement this policy. Writing seminars are one such exception. And if a student has a compelling reason for including the grade in a particular class as part of an application for a job or graduate school program, he or she should be allowed to do so.

While shadow grading would not be a panacea for the stress and uncertainty associated with freshman fall, it would help ease the rather difficult transition from high school to college. And, in that regard, it is certainly consistent with Princeton’s greatest tradition — its commitment to undergraduates.