Each time course selection opens up, many Dartmouth students are faced with a shared dilemma: “Do I take a course that genuinely interests me or one in which I can obtain an easy A?” When faced with this binary, students often choose the latter. Although these so-called ‘layups’ — courses considered to be easy A’s — may be uninteresting to them or irrelevant to their focus of study, many students opt into them to improve their GPA.
School is defined by learning. Children go to school to become educated with the hopes of making productive future contributions to society. Grades were invented to measure students’ progress by providing a metric for mastery of a subject. Yet, as many students progress through their academic journeys, the educational process gradually drifts away from that intended purpose. Students often develop a toxic attachment to results rather than the learning itself, especially in high school and college. This is especially prevalent among college students who were incredibly academically successful in high school, as they likely feel strong pressure to continue their record of academic success at all costs. Many students forgo intellectual creativity and curiosity — pivotal aspects of the learning process — to get an A.
So, how do students’ attitudes toward the grading system in its current form exacerbate a flawed educational system? First, an excessive attachment to grades diminishes students’ genuine interest in what they are learning. Many students find enjoyment in classes in which they earn high grades and feel frustration for those in which they fall short. These sentiments may also discourage students from taking courses that genuinely interest them, instead pushing them toward those they feel will reflect better on their transcript. Given a selection of courses as intellectually rigorous as Dartmouth’s, students are especially invested in identifying ‘layups.’ During course registration, many students consult Layup List — a course review website used to find layups — to determine whether or not others have found the courses they are considering easy.
This common exercise defeats the purpose of a liberal arts education — to teach students to be well-rounded thinkers — and discourages them from exploring a wider variety of courses outside of their comfort zone out of fear of obtaining a bad grade. One of the main rationales behind Dartmouth’s extensive distributive requirements is to encourage students to explore a wide variety of subjects, including those that may not necessarily be their strong suit. Dartmouth’s non-recording option, which allows students to set their lowest desired grade in the course, was invented for this very purpose: to encourage students to take courses outside of their typical purview at a relatively low cost. The policy has its flaws — for example, courses that count toward major or distributive requirements can’t be NRO-ed, which can further disincentivize students from taking difficult classes in which they’re interested, since those courses must factor into their GPA. So, while the idea of an NRO seems like a beneficial way to allow students to go out of their comfort zone to take different courses, in practice, it is not entirely effective.
And Dartmouth doesn’t help students ignore grades, either. Canvas, the platform Dartmouth utilizes for most course communication and grading, allows students to experiment with hypothetical grades on future assignments and exams to see how their overall grade would be affected. I believe this option incentivizes stress-inducing behavior — constantly checking and calculating grades — and heavily contributes to the association of academic outcome with self-worth. Obsessive grade experimentation causes many students to become focused on numerical performance as an indication of personal success, which often becomes conflated with self-worth, causing students’ sense of self-worth to diminish.
It’s certainly difficult to ignore the prospect of grades, especially as a Dartmouth student. Dartmouth is teeming with high-achieving students, many of whom have always derived their sense of self-worth from their grades. No matter how educators try to play it off, your GPA matters when you’re applying to graduate school or jobs. At the same time, many students highly overestimate the level of transcript success they must achieve, assuming that they must obtain a practically perfect GPA to be successful. Yet, for example, the median GPA of students accepted to Harvard Law last school year was 3.84, meaning non-As won’t automatically bar students from getting into their desired graduate school. Many students forget that they can earn imperfect grades and still be successful, though many still put excessive and unnecessary pressure on themselves.
You may be thinking that this is incredibly unrealistic. How can we completely ignore our academic results in our courses that we dedicate so much time to, especially when our grades play such a crucial role in our achievements post-grad? Yet, this mutual exclusivity is inaccurate. Obtaining good grades is entirely compatible, if not facilitated, by a focus on learning. According to a multitude of studies from countries such as Germany and Hong Kong, students with higher self-reported stress levels tend to perform worse academically. So, not only is this mindset counterproductive, but it also goes hand-in-hand with lower student success. When we are excited about our courses, the good grades will come on their own.
Students should reorient their priorities toward learning rather than obtaining good grades. When completing assignments, we should think about the process of learning the content. We should immerse ourselves in the topics we are learning to become smarter individuals through actively engaging in coursework and becoming genuinely excited about the content we are learning and the amazing opportunity we have to learn it as Dartmouth students. Grades can help measure performance, but they should not be the sole determinant of our attitudes toward schoolwork. Through shifting our mindsets, we can maximize our Dartmouth experience, leaving as more well-rounded individuals who are set up for success beyond just an academic transcript.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
