"I came from a competitive high school. I had a 4.0 GPA. I was obsessed with thinking the world would end if I didn't get an A."

This is what Kerry Skemp, a senior English major at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, said when asked about her high school experience.

Sound even a little familiar? Any serious student will tell you that college is all about making the grade, earning the As, Bs, and occasional C that will represent the blood, sweat, tears, and frequent all-nighters that went into earning your education.

Today Kerry isn't quite the stressball she used to be--but she feels she's learning even more. At Reed College, letters are only a small part of your grade.

Andrea Neuhoff, another Reed College senior, explains the shift. "In high school, you think 'I have an A in math class, so I can slack on the math.' It's not like that at Reed. The main push for doing well at Reed is just being well-educated."

Reed is just one of a rising number of colleges and universities that have adopted grading systems as unique as students themselves. Check out how these alternative grading policies are changing the focus from letters to learning.

Grads without grades
At schools like New College of Florida (NCF) in Sarasota, grades have gone the way of the fanny pack. In their place, students receive a one- to three-page evaluation of their performance at the end of the semester.
 
"Courses are not graded and students do not fulfill traditional 'credit hours' as they do at many colleges," explains NCF's Dean of Admission Jake Hartvigsen.

"We believe students' progress should be based on demonstrated competence and mastery of a subject rather than on the accumulation of credits and grades."

Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, has a similar approach. Students receive written evaluations of their work rather than grades. Liza Wolfe, a sophomore at Evergreen, says that evaluations add a dimension of personality and character to her academic record that will set her apart in future competition for admission to graduate school or for a job.

"In graduating from Evergreen, I will have 40 to 60 pages of recommendations detailing how I applied theory to practice," says Wolfe. "By the time a student graduates, their transcript tells a story of their progression throughout college."

But not having grades changes much more than just the face of your transcript. College sans scores means no academic competition, no room for slacking, and no conventional way to assess how much work needs to be done for a given class. It typically means no multiple choice tests, no 500-person lecture classes, no graduation honors, and no cram sessions the night before. What you do get are smaller classes, boatloads of faculty attention, and usually a more discussion-based curriculum, say those immersed in the alternative academic atmosphere.

Wolfe agrees, stating that Evergreen has given her the opportunity to vastly expand her academic interests and to personalize her education. "The evaluations reflect only my work--there is no one setting a curve. (They reflect) my contribution to class, and my attempt to encourage my classmates to think deeper on different issues. Instead of being paralyzed by the fear of not making the grade, I am encouraged to explore and challenge myself, and how I do so is reflected in my transcript."

The final word?
Students may value a final transcript that thoroughly evaluates their academic performance, but what happens when a future employer or admissions counselor receives as many as 60 pages of evaluations to sift through? It depends on who you ask. Last year The Wall Street Journal ranked the New College of Florida as the second-best public college or university in the country for sending grads to the nation's leading law, medical, and graduate schools. This would seem to suggest that evaluations may be the wave of the future.

But graduating from college without grades makes Kate Fox a bit nervous about applying for graduate school in visual design. Fox, a senior at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, explains that Bennington students who wish to receive letter grades in addition to narrative evaluations must request grades at the beginning of the semester. Grades cannot be requested retroactively.

As a result, Fox, who made the grad-school decision midway through her college career, will graduate with a transcript only partially filled with letters. Echoing the sentiments of other students interviewed, Fox was unsure how graduate programs would receive a mostly narrative transcript.

"I know that graduate schools probably do prefer having regular letter grades, but with the schools I'm interested in applying to, these narrative evaluations could actually help me," she says.

For students skeptical about leaping directly into a gradeless world, colleges like Bennington; Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts; Reed College; and the University of California, Santa Cruz, all offer narrative or performance evaluations combined with traditional letter grades. Though specific grading policies vary within each school, students get the benefit of a universal method of assessment as well as the benefit of an individualized evaluation.

According to Dr. William Ladusaw, vice provost of the University of California, Santa Cruz, "Our grading policy gives you everything that anybody else's grading system gives you ... Work to the best of your ability and discover your own potential. This type of grading system has that effect."

Dr. Ladusaw asserts that evaluation grading emulates policies used at prestigious institutions such as Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville, Virginia. At these professional schools, letter grades aren't given to any students during their first year.

"Another way of looking at it is that we're just treating our undergraduate students like our graduate students," Dr. Ladusaw says.

According to Reed College's Dean of Admissions, Paul Marthers, grades are always relative expressions of academic achievement. "A grade isn't just a grade," he says. "It's part of an academic context." He explains that the trick is to find the academic context that's perfect for you and a method of assessment that you can live with, whether that's through traditional letter grades, evaluations, a combination of the two, or something radically different.

The first step is to take a good look at how you learn. Neuhoff--who has thrived under Reed's evaluation system--recommends examining your favorite class in high school and why you liked it. If it's because the class was marked by creativity, open discussion, and was fueled by self-motivation, an alternative grading policy may be just the thing for you.