Xatal

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: After I began to tell family and other adults that I decided to attend UC Santa Cruz, I was suddenly constantly bombarded by the same question, “Does UCSC give grades?” For a while, UC Santa Cruz did not actually give grades. The school earned a reputation in California for this at the time, and now many adults will often wonder if the school has changed it’s grading system.

And yes, the university has.

However, after talking to one of my professors last quarter, I learned a good bit more about the old system, and I definitely think that’s worth learning about as well.

First, let’s talk about how the system is now.

The grading system today

UC Santa Cruz uses a standard A-F and 4.0-based system to receive grades, like most other universities. After the quarter ends, you’ll receive a standard letter grade: B+, C-, A, etc. This is factored into your GPA.

When signing up for classes, you have the option to take a class pass/no-pass. Taking a class pass/no-pass means you have only two outcomes: You pass the class (by earning what would be a D or better)  or you fail. Classes taken pass/no-pass don’t count for or against your GPA, making them great for fulfilling general education requirements. However, you shouldn’t take classes for your major pass/no-pass (many majors won’t even allow it). By the time you graduate, no more than 25% of your classes may have been taken pass/no-pass.

After taking a class, you’ll sometimes receive a short evaluation from your professor detailing how you did in the class. These are optional, and how in-depth they are can vary greatly.

The old grading system

From UCSC’s founding in the 1960s until the late 1990s, all classes were taken on a pass/no-pass basis. In addition to simply passing/failing a class, a detailed evaluation was provided for every class, explaining how the student did and his/her strengths and weaknesses in the class.

For example, if you took a math class and passed, your evaluation might explain how well you did on the midterms and the final. If you worked on a project for the class, your project would be briefly explained and evaluated. Every class would come with an evaluation, and the complete evaluations would be shown on your college transcripts.

During this time, UC Santa Cruz sent more students to top graduate schools than any other UC, including UC Berkeley and UCLA. Think about it: for the top students, your college transcript turned into a 30 page letter of recommendation from every professor explaining how awesome you were in each class.

However, on the other side of the coin, UCSC sent fewer students to all other graduate schools than any other UC. Because students didn’t have a GPA to provide with graduate school applications, many graduate schools disregarded the applications and turned the students down.

The written evaluation system encouraged students to try new things. A biology major could take an art class for fun. A literature major could take a physics class. Students could dabble into new areas without worrying about possibly ruining their GPA.

Although I do enjoy having a standard GPA, I think the old system makes a surprising amount of sense in that it provides a more accurate overview of what a student is really like. What do you think?