<p>i was talking to modestmelody about brown not officially having GPA’s, who told me that it shouldn’t be a problem in the future. Id like to hear other people’s perspective on this.</p>
<p>From the website–
"With the inception of its New Curriculum in 1969, Brown University eliminated the calculation of Grade Point Averages (GPA) for its students. Students and others may sometimes make their own calculations from transcript records, but such calculations in no way reflect an official university statistic.</p>
<p>Instead, Brown University promotes the use of criteria for assessment and evaluation that go beyond grades and GPA. These include portfolios of a student’s work, Course Performance Reports, and letters of recommendation.</p>
<p>Given Brown’s unique grading system, it is difficult to compare a GPA calculated from a Brown transcript with ones from other schools. Brown allows students to take an unlimited number of courses S/NC (Satisfactory/No Credit) and only records full-letter grades of A, B or C (without plusses and minuses). There is no grade of D, and failing grades are not recorded.</p>
<p>Employers as well as graduate and professional schools seek Brown graduates for their analytical ability, independence, creativity, communication, and leadership skills, qualities not necessarily reflected in a GPA. All students and alumni who choose not to compute a GPA for resumes, applications, or wherever else it may be requested are acting consistently with Brown’s educational policies."</p>
<p>1) how does brown not having a GPA translate when applying to graduate schools or jobs? afterall, calculating my gpa would not be acting “consistently with brown’s educational policies.” so would brown students need to compensate this by providing additional materials to employers to evaluate their coursework? It just seems weird to be handing in essays, thesis statements, etc to goldman sachs, for example. i imagine they could really care less about those materials.</p>
<p>1a) does that mean employers and grad schools who know brown judge brown students on a completely different level? what about smaller employers and grad schools that don’t know about brown?</p>
<p>2) since students can drop a class whenever they want, would that lend itself to abuse? (ie a student would drop the class over getting a C for the final grade.)</p>
<p>3) would having only A B C no +/- discredit the work of students who do well, in the sense that quality of students spectra is cut short to only the C range and not reflective of the actual student population who may be getting worse than that?</p>
<p>4) how does brown determine latin honors?</p>