Admission to a school like Dartmouth is typically reflective of a very successful academic career in high school. While it's true that a lot of bright students are naturally passionate and interested in their studies, the pressure to maintain a high GPA in high school in order to get into college often ends up overriding a desire to fully comprehend material.
Consequently, before we even start college, Dartmouth students are more or less programmed to work toward grades, according to John Montgomery '15.
"[Grades] motivate the work I do a great deal," Montgomery said. "I want to be successful, and I know that in order to be successful, you have to get good grades."
Montgomery's perspective is certainly logical and would probably be supported by most students here. But the consensus that grades are the driving force of our education begs the question: What would Dartmouth be like without them?
There are ways of getting around receiving grades at Dartmouth. Many students opt to NRO their classes to control the grades that appear on their transcripts. Perhaps the closest that Dartmouth has to taking classes without a grade, however, is the option of auditing classes. Ashley Wong '14, for example, is auditing a math class to bridge the gap between the calculus courses she took in high school and calculus at Dartmouth. Because she is auditing the course and thus is not receiving a grade, she admitted to not doing much work for the class.
"I'm still learning, but I definitely don't go to every class," she said.
An important consideration when imagining Dartmouth without grades is whether or not the school could still have distributive requirements, as students might not push themselves nearly as hard in certain classes if course evaluations were simply pass/fail.
Andy Huang '12 pointed out, however, that this lack of motivation would not necessarily be a negative outcome.
"I might use those sacrificed hours to work on something I am actually invested in that is relevant to my major," he said.
There seems to be a consensus among students that they are more inclined to work hard in classes they enjoy. At Evergreen State College, this idea is central to their gradeless philosophy of education. "[At Evergreen], what inspires the imagination of the student is really important," Media and Community Relations Manager Jason Wettstein said. "A lot of students come here already having figured out what their intellectual passions are. That's a huge factor in the Evergreen experience. It's about how to mold those ideas into a clear pathway toward a career or graduate study."
At Dartmouth, students strive for citations on their transcripts. But at Evergreen, students' transcripts contain endless direct commentary on their intellectual progress in the form of "narratives" that mimic the type of critiques employees receive in their careers in the real world, Wettstein said.
"It's a way to have something relevant in your intellectual life and your career to sort of pinpoint what you're working on," Wettstein said.
Evergreen sophomore Karl Anderson, who attended a boarding high school with a conventional grading system, lauded the capacity of Evergreen's curriculum to help guide students who are unsure of their interests.
"Whatever program you take at Evergreen, you'll be able to connect to it from different sides," he said. "There are dance classes here that are actually science classes very focused on biology and anatomy and physiology. That's an example of how we incorporate all of these subjects into one program because life is not one-dimensional."
So they don't just major in econ or gov when all else fails? Go figure. Still, while Dartmouth students might occasionally complain about a class being useless or sleep through a 10A because it lacks an attendance grade, that doesn't mean we are intellectually unmotivated people.
"I don't think the campus' intellectual atmosphere has much to do with grades, because grades are about performance in class," Mike McDavid '15 said. "Intellectual atmosphere is more about how you apply it outside of the classroom."
If the idea that grades aren't actually central to intellectualism is true, and we really are engaged people with interests and passions, then it's possible that Dartmouth wouldn't be so different without conventional forms of assessment. Maybe we wouldn't bother with writing an extra draft of a paper or reading the footnotes if there was no pressure to have a good GPA, but we'd also be less inclined to check out the layup list before course registration.
Consider that next time you're questioning your motives for taking a class or completing an assignment. However, since it's week nine and finals are around the corner, you should probably keep it hypothetical for now. After all, experimental education does have its place at Dartmouth we call it sophomore summer.
