Deadline to Submit Grades Moved to Jan. 3

After a change in the official grade submission deadline this year, many students are anxiously awaiting their final marks as the grades for numerous fall courses have yet to appear on students’ online records.

More than a week after the end of exam period, dozens of classes, including some of the fall semester’s largest offerings—Life Sciences 1a, Mathematics 1b, Ethical Reasoning 21, and Social Studies 10a, among many others—have not yet made grades available through the registrar’s website, according to students contacted by The Crimson.

“I am so frustrated right now. I keep checking my grades,” said Alexis R. Karlin ’12, who has not received grades for any of the five classes she took this fall.

“I’ve been checking every day since finals ended,” said Min Yu ’13, noting that the one class for which she has yet to receive a grade, Government 1740, had a final paper due on Dec. 10 and no final exam.

Dean of Undergraduate Education Jay M. Harris wrote in an e-mailed statement that the official deadline for reporting grades changed this year. Previously course-specific submission deadlines were assigned based on when classes completed their final exams. This year all courses are required to submit grades by Jan. 3.

Harris said that under the old calendar—before the finals were moved before winter break—professors were generally required to submit their grades four days after their classes’ exams took place.

Last year, the four-day rule was applied to the new December exam calendar, resulting in submission deadlines that fell near Christmas.

Since it was “impossible” for many instructors to report grades in the days before or after Christmas, according to Harris, last year the academic deans decided informally to not consider grades delinquent until the second business day following the winter holidays.

This year, instead of initially assigning deadlines based on the dates of courses’ finals, “We made last year’s de facto policy the de jure policy,” Harris wrote.

Though they were unaware of the change in policy, several students said that the waiting period seemed longer than usual to them this year.

“The past four semesters, I’ve never felt that it’s taken this long to get my grades back,” said Bryce J. Gilfillian ’12, who has not yet received grades for two of his four classes. “All my friends are wondering the same thing. It’s like, where are the grades?”

“I definitely think it’s slower this year,” Karlin said, echoing Gilfillian’s comments. “I definitely got them before New Year’s last year, and I think before Christmas.”

Harris said that the change in policy “probably has a very small effect on the timing of grade receipt,” noting that professors who were able to complete their grading before break likely did so despite the later deadline.

“Students, like all other human beings, tend to (improperly) generalize from their own experiences,” Harris wrote. “Those who had all their grades by this time last year...assume a global change when, in all likelihood nothing of the kind has happened.”

Some grades have been added to the registrar's website during the break. The grades for two high-enrollment classes—Computer Science 50 and Chemistry 17, which boast 494 and 278 students, respectively—became viewable on students’ records during the day on Wednesday.

The Office of the Registrar and the instructors from fourteen classes that have yet to make their grades available have not returned requests for comment.

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.