Grade Point Anxiety

As we reach the end of shopping period, ready to hand in study cards and embark on new intellectual endeavors, there is in the back of many students’ minds the worry that academic probation or suspension is looming.  The fall semester’s course and grade reports, in a very frustrating turn of events, are obscenely late in getting online, leaving many of us quietly questioning what our academic future holds. If a student’s worst fears are realized, this curious, unexplained tardiness will end with his or her departure—or at least a disfigured GPA and the student stuck with a new semester of classes whose selection would have benefited from prior knowledge of last term’s performance.

According to the Registrar’s website, grades should ordinarily be available 10 days from the date of the last exam, though in years past it has often been sooner. The 10-day rule puts the official day at Friday, Feb. 4—a day which has come and quickly gone, but with students still gradeless.  The only way to get grades without the Registrar’s website is to request a transcript, which requires money and a waiting period. Thankfully, the office has promised to have grades out by today, but there still remains the question of why this year has proven so difficult for the Registrar—and why the office did not offer an explanation earlier to ease students’ anxieties.

Speaking strictly psychologically, this delay in grades has significantly increased the student body’s stress level. Harvard students are notoriously neurotic about grades, and many understandably spent a good part of last Friday compulsively, if futilely, refreshing the Registrar’s grade report page.  And, as most any anxious Harvard student can tell you, the “daily” update promised by the website was last honored on January 17 at 14:00:03 EST—an inordinately long day ago.

Mental health aside, students also need to know their grades as soon as possible for numerous practical reasons.  Many applications for summer internships and other programs are due at the end of January, and usually require fall semester grades. Even if students can submit grades as a late supplement, doing so may decrease their chances of acceptance.  Besides applications, knowledge of grades is needed for financial reasons: many scholarships are contingent upon the grades received each term, and lower drivers insurance is available for (documented) high-performing students.  And in terms of coursework, knowing the results of the past semester has a huge impact on class selection for the new term—poor performance prompts most students to take a lighter load. Ideally, grades should be available before shopping period.

One way to help prevent future delays depends on Harvard professors and TFs. They must be more conscientious about turning grades in on time, by the set deadline—apparently, a good portion of grades had not yet been turned in by this term’s deadline. In general, however, the whole Registrar grade process needs to be more transparent. Three different administrators in the Office of the Registrar refused to comment about the reasons behind the delay, denying even a student’s basic right to an explanation. Moreover, the office could have saved a lot of student stress if it had simply posted about the new extended date—a simple message that said grades would be up on Feb. 8 would have been more helpful than the frustrating message of the site’s last update. Or, better yet, the Registrar could make grades available on a real-time basis, so students can view them as they are turned in. In the past, students would log in to the course and grade reports website to find the surprise of one or two grades. There does not seem to be any logical reason that the Registrar cannot return to this system. We should not be forced to suffer for the negligence of a few late professors and TFs, and should be allowed quick and convenient access to whatever results are available.

As of today, the angst of the old semester should be gone—shopping done, grades finalized. Wednesday will really ring in the full start of the new term. Hopefully the Registrar will take a sign from the lunar New Year, learn from its mistakes and resolve not to repeat them again.