<p>I read that at Swarthmore gpa's are not calculated. Also, a high percent of graduates go on to graduate school later. </p>
<p>How is a graduate presented to a graduate school? How does the admissions com evaluate the candidate without also seeing how the candidate fared academically? Are they provided with a school profile similar to the one a high school submits for undergraduate admission? </p>
<p>I'm just wondering how that works. It seems to work well given the high percent that move on to graduate school.</p>
<p>Possibly what you read had to do with the fact that first semester grades are officially recorded only as credit/no credit, and don’t factor into students’ GPAs.</p>
<p>No, you’re right, searcher. The Registrar doesn’t calculate everyone’s GPAs for them as a standard rule - there’s a GPA calculator you can use that they provide so you can calculate your own GPA, but they don’t do it for you. So you get grades, and can figure out what your GPA is for grad school, but just like class rank, it’s not something that the Registrar calculates. :]</p>
<p>Forgetmenots, that’s correct. But I think what the OP was really wondering was whether there were grades on transcripts, more than the calculated GPA itself:
</p>
<p>So, OP, a Swarthmore transcript shows grades for all courses taken after the first semester (except those for which a student elects the pass/fail option, available for up to four additional courses after the first semester). It does not show an official GPA calculation. How’s that? :)</p>
<p>(And actually, official calculations are done frequently for various purposes, such as study abroad programs that request them for their applications, athletic honor rolls, and so on.)</p>
<p>Also, there are actually “shadow grades” given for that first pass/fail semester, just so those grades can be calculated for graduate school purposes. My son had to do this for his grad school applications.</p>
<p>By the way, do you know whether graduate schools really look at shadow grades? I am thinking of taking a class pass/fail next semester and am wondering whether they’ll look at the grade I will get. I want to major in math, and I am interested in pass/failing a course on Shakespeare. How much do grad schools care about classes outside your major?</p>
<p>My understanding is that very very few graduate schools ask for shadow grades, particularly because there isn’t any official record of them, so I don’t think they can effectively be shown to be real grades.</p>
<p>Also, I never got a grade for two of my pass-fail classes freshman year, which makes giving them out tough. :P</p>
<p>the only place that has ever asked to see my (first-year) shadow grades was the Middlebury summer language school program, which was probably because I was applying at the beginning of spring semester, freshman year and thus appeared to have no grades. I also think they may not have read the back of the transcript where it explains the grading policy…</p>
<p>I also applied to 8 grad schools this past fall and not one ever asked about shadow grades (nor was I at all negatively affected in admissions…).</p>