Students will be allowed to reverse a pass/D/fail grade option for a course that could be used to fulfill requirements for a concentration or a certificate, according to Undergraduate Student Government academics committee chair Ramie Fathy ’16.
Students would be able to reverse these P/D/F designations once they have chosen their concentration and/or certificates, Fathy said.
Fathy will communicate with administratorsto finalize an implementation date for the change, according toUSG president Ella Cheng '16.
Cheng is a former staff writer for The Daily Princetonian.
The committee, which organized the initiative to reform P/D/F policies, proposed several changes to the University’s current P/D/F policy on Friday to the Committee on Examinations and Standing, academics committee member Erika Kirgios’ 17 said.
The proposal was based on data from a survey administered to the student body over the Thanksgiving break, which received over 2,000 responses.
Kirgios noted that the survey revealed that 22 percent of students have chosen not to pursue a potential concentration or certificate because they used a P/D/F grade in an introductory course and could not use that credit to fulfill higher-level course requirements.
“The students definitely wanted the policy to change,” Fathy explained, noting that the results show student interest in a new P/D/F policy.
Kirgios added that the academics committee received notification shortly after the proposal from Senior Associate Dean of the College Claire Fowler that the Committee on Examinations and Standing was currently working on a process to allow students to appeal through their residential college dean to uncover a grade in a course that they took with a P/D/F if they need it to meet a departmental or certificate requirement.
"I would be very much in favor of students being able to reverse a P/D/F for a course they needed for a department or a certificate," Fowler said.“I wouldn’t like to think that choosing to P/D/F would prevent somebody from majoring in a department.”
Kirgios said that the academics committee’s proposed revisions also included a reverse P/D/F policy, which would allow students to uncover their grade in a course and reverse their decision to opt for the P/D/F option up to two weeks into the following semester.
However, this change will not be implemented, she noted. Fowler explained that some faculty members might not support a P/D/F policy that allows students to reverse any P/D/F choice.
"I imagine that many faculty [members] would probably consider that excessive grade management,” she said.
Fathy noted that the survey revealed that 50 percent of the student respondents use the P/D/F option for grade management.
Fathy and Kirgios explained that a reversible P/D/F policy would still encourage students to explore new classes, and that the current policy may prevent students from fully engaging in a class if they know once they have applied an irreversible P/D/F that they will not receive a letter grade.
"If you're not investing, are you really exploring? We don't think so,” Kirgios explained.
Fowler also explained that if reversing any P/D/F were an option, students would likely uncover their grades if they did well, but keep the P/D/F grade only if they did not do well.
"The biggest problem, I think, if you allowed everybody to just change everything, then it would mean that when you have a 'P' on your transcript, it's basically a 'C',” she explained.
Kirgios noted that this is a valid counterargument to a complete reverse P/D/F policy.
Stevie Yang ’18 noted that the newly changed policy allowing students to reverse an old P/D/F designation if the class can count towards a concentration or certificate is especially attractive.
She explained that the neuroscience concentration requires COS 126: General Computer Science, which may be a deterrent for some students.
"Because I've never had programming experience, I'm scared to take it, and if I took it, I couldn't P/D/F it if I wanted to major in neuro, so it would be nice to have that option,” she added.
Computer science concentrator Stephanie Liu ’18 said that she is taking a sociology class with the P/D/F option because she was interested in the topic but wanted to dedicate more of her time to her concentration requirements.
She noted that taking the class using one of her P/D/Fs allowed her to explore the topic and participate in class without the pressure of earning a letter grade. However, she also added that a reversible P/D/F policy would encourage her to be more engaged in the class.
“If I knew I had a chance of getting a better grade — sometimes you sell yourself short, and then because you know you're already not putting effort in — you don't bother,” she explained.
According to Kirgios, the survey showed that 93 percent of students said they would devote more time and attention to a course they are taking P/D/F if they had the option of reversing the pass/D/fail if they did well.
Fathy noted that the issue of P/D/F policies was one of the main topics students wanted addressed by USG, according to polls run last year by Cheng.
Fathy said that, in the future, the academics committee may address the issue of students not having sufficient information about their standing in a class at the P/D/F designation deadline.
The survey revealed that 76 percent of students have felt they lacked enough information at the time of the deadline to decide whether to elect P/D/F grading, he added.
Kirgios added that it would be helpful if the faculty or administration could enforce a deadline asking faculty to provide midterm grades even in upper-level classes, where this is not required, to help students decide whether they should take the class P/D/F.
In recent years, the deadline for choosing to take a class P/D/F was moved to two weeks later in the term, which is one of the reasons that the academics committee chose to focus on suggesting other changes to the policy, Kirgios explained.
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