Pass/Fail Grading: Home

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PURPOSE: To measure the impact of a change in grading system in the first two years of medical school, from graded (A, B, C, D, F) to pass/fail, on medical students' academic performance, attendance, residency match, satisfaction, and psychological well-being.
METHOD: For both the graded and pass/fail classes, objective data were collected on academic performance in the first- and second-year courses, the clerkships, United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Steps 1 and 2 Clinical Knowledge (CK), and residency placement. Self-report data were collected using a Web survey (which included the Dupuy General Well-Being Schedule) administered each of the first four semesters of medical school. The study was conducted from 2002 to 2007 at the University of Virginia School of Medicine.
RESULTS: The pass/fail class exhibited a significant increase in well-being during each of the first three semesters of medical school relative to the graded class, greater satisfaction with the quality of their medical education during the first four semesters of medical school, and greater satisfaction with their personal lives during the first three semesters of medical school. The graded and pass/fail classes showed no significant differences in performance in first- and second-year courses, grades in clerkships, scores on USMLE Step 1 and Step 2CK, success in residency placement, and attendance at academic activities.
CONCLUSIONS: A change in grading from letter grades to pass/fail in the first two years of medical school conferred distinct advantages to medical students, in terms of improved psychological well-being and satisfaction, without any reduction in performance in courses or clerkships, USMLE test scores, success in residency placement, or level of attendance.

A law school professor analyzed data on pass/fail grading and conventional grading in his legal negotiation class over 11 years to determine statistically significant differences in performance of the two groups of students. Grades for both negotiation simulation exercises and written papers were analyzed. Results showed differences between the groups, but the professor elects to continue the pass/fail option

This qualitative case study explores how undergraduate students and their instructor made meaning of students’ motivation to learn in a one-credit, pass/fail first-year seminar. The findings point to the importance of addressing structural motivational barriers and ensuring that instructors possess the instructional, motivational, and developmental strategies necessary to foster motivation.

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Students would be a lot better off without either of these relics from a less enlightened age. [...] a grade-oriented environment is associated with increased levels of cheating, grades promote a fear of failure even in high-achieving students, and the elimination of grades (in favor of a pass/fail system) produces substantial benefits with no apparent disadvantages in medical school.

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Performance in a second-year course in periodontics/orthodontics for three classes at the State University of New York at Stony Brook School of Dental Medicine who received grades under an honors/pass/fail system was compared to that of three academically comparable classes that received letter grades. (Author/MLW)

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Topics include the role of grading in higher education, the use of non-traditional grading systems or pass-fail systems, and the views of education scholars Alfie Kohn and Fred Glennon. The pedagogical views of theorist Paulo Freire are noted.

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A study compared freshman medical student achievement and satisfaction under two grading schemes: a four-level grading plan (honors, high pass, pass, fail) with two examinations, and pass-fail with weekly quizzes. Under the latter system, students continued to perform well and reported greater satisfaction.

To objectively measure the effect of a pass-fail grading system on stress, mood, group cohesion, and test anxiety in medical students.

Beginning with the class of 2006, the Mayo Medical School, Rochester, Minn, changed the grading system for first-year courses from a 5-interval grading system to a pass-fail grading system. Students in the previous class of 2005, who were graded using a 5-interval system during their first year of medical school, were compared with students in the class of 2006. Using a prospective study design, the 2 groups were compared at the end of both the first year and the second year of medical school on the Perceived Stress Scale, Profile of Mood States, Perceived Cohesion Scale, Test Anxiety Inventory, and (after year 2) the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1. Data collection occurred in 2002 and 2003 with the class of 2005 and in 2003 and 2004 with the class of 2006.

Students graded with the pass-fail system had less perceived stress (median, 15.0 vs 21.0; P-.01) and greater group cohesion (median, 34.5 vs 30.0; P=.02) at the end of their second year of coursework than their 5-interval graded peers. The pass-fail group had better mood (median, 46.5) than the graded group (median, 64.0), but this difference was not statistically significant (P=.07). No significant differences were found between the 2 groups in test-taking anxiety or in United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 board scores.

Pass-fail grading may reduce stress and increase group cohesion in medical students compared with traditional 5-interval grading.

Student well-being is enhanced and objective academic performance is not adversely affected by a pass/fail evaluation system, but students’ ability to obtain a desired residency programme may be hindered by individual programme directors’ preferences for tiered grading systems. There is an overall paucity of literature on this topic and additional study is needed.

The first semester of a collegiate engineering program can be quite stressful for a student, resulting in anxiety and decreased academic performance. While there are various factors leading to these outcomes, the pressure of grades early in an engineering program can be a significant contributor. GPA is typically used to determine a student’s academic success, but the reality is that the student often needs time to learn how to earn and keep good grades in college before they accurately reflect the student’s performance and potential. Considering this, Colorado State University recently offered an option for incoming engineering students to take all of their first-semester classes as pass/fail. For the fall semester of 2010, 138 of 448 first-year students enrolled in the pass/fail option. In this first semester of the program, success was determined from a few measures by comparing performance of students in the pass/fail option to those in traditional A-F grading. In the first analysis described herein, GPA was reviewed for both groups of students, which revealed that students who selected the option received lower grades than those who did not. Authors review the program critically, often holding opposing viewpoints on whether outcomes have and will be positive.

A comparison of student performance resulting from the transition from a pass/no credit to the traditional letter grade system indicated that the former system was not superior to the latter system. Academic performance was better in the graded system; academic standards were raised, particularly at the masters' level.

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Traditionally, medical schools have tended to make assumptions that students will “automatically” engage in self-education effectively after graduation and subsequent training in residency and fellowships. In reality, the majority of medical graduates out in practice feel unprepared for learning on their own. Many medical schools are now adopting strategies and pedagogies to help students become self-regulating learners. Along with these changes in practices and pedagogy, many schools are eliminating a cornerstone of extrinsic motivation: discriminating grades. To study the effects of the switch from discriminating to pass–fail grading in the second year of medical school, we compared internal and external assessments and evaluations for a second-year class with a discriminating grading scale (Honors, High Pass, Pass, Fail) and for a second-year class with a pass–fail grading scale. Of the measures we compared (MCATs, GPAs, means on second-year examinations, USMLE Step 1 scores, residency placement, in which there were no statistically significant changes), the only statistically significant decreases (lower performance with pass fail) were found in two of the second-year courses. Performance in one other course also improved significantly. Pass–fail grading can meet several important intended outcomes, including “leveling the playing field” for incoming students with different academic backgrounds, reducing competition and fostering collaboration among members of a class, more time for extracurricular interests and personal activities. Pass–fail grading also reduces competition and supports collaboration, and fosters intrinsic motivation, which is key to self-regulated, lifelong learning.

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Several papers have proposed that the grading system affects students’ incentives to exert effort. In particular, the previous literature has compared student effort under relative and absolute grading systems, but the results are mixed and the implications of the models have not been empirically tested. In this paper, I build a model where students maximize their utility by choosing effort. I investigate how student effort changes when there is a change in the grading system from absolute grading to relative grading. I use a unique dataset from college students in Chile who faced a change in the grading system to test the implications of my model. My model predicts that, for low levels of uncertainty, low-ability students exert less effort with absolute grading, and high-ability students exert more effort with absolute grading. The data confirm that there is a change in the distribution of effort.

Using predictive modeling methods, it is possible to identify at-risk students early and inform both the instructors and the students. While some universities have started to use standards-based grading, which has educational advantages over common score-based grading, at–risk prediction models have not been adapted to reap the benefits of standards-based grading in courses that utilize this grading. In this paper, we compare predictive methods to identify at-risk students in a course that used standards-based grading. Only in-semester performance data that were available to the course instructors were used in the prediction methods. When identifying at-risk students, it is important to minimize false negative (i.e., type II) error while not increasing false positive (i.e., type I) error significantly. To increase the generalizability of the models and accuracy of the predictions, we used a feature selection method to reduce the number of variables used in each model. The Naive Bayes Classifier model and an Ensemble model using a sequence of models (i.e., Support Vector Machine, K-Nearest Neighbors, and Naive Bayes Classifier) had the best results among the seven tested modeling methods.

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Several papers have proposed that the grading system affects students’ incentives to exert effort. In particular, the previous literature has compared student effort under relative and absolute grading systems, but the results are mixed and the implications of the models have not been empirically tested. In this paper, I build a model where students maximize their utility by choosing effort. I investigate how student effort changes when there is a change in the grading system from absolute grading to relative grading. I use a unique dataset from college students in Chile who faced a change in the grading system to test the implications of my model. My model predicts that, for low levels of uncertainty, low-ability students exert less effort with absolute grading, and high-ability students exert more effort with absolute grading. The data confirm that there is a change in the distribution of effort.

The relationship between assessment and learning in higher education often comes down to a single thing: a grade. Despite widespread criticism of grades as inexact tools, whose overemphasis undermines student learning and negatively affects student well-being, they continue to be the norm in the assessment of student learning. This paper analyses an alternate form of assessment: so-called ‘gradeless learning’. This study theoretically and geographically contextualises the recent implementation of a gradeless learning policy at a large public university in Asia, and presents findings from a student opinion survey about the policy. The paper shows that respondents overwhelmingly understand and often agree with the central claims of gradeless learning, including its potential to ease students into college life, allow them to make more daring choices in their studies and even develop as lifelong learners. However, the aim of relieving stress among one group of students has increased stress for others. The study explains the circumstances that create this divergence in student stress levels, which are both locally specific and common to all gradeless systems. The paper concludes by discussing the effectiveness of the gradeless system in achieving its aims and suggesting future research avenues.

Colleges and universities work hard to create environments that encourage student learning, and they develop grading policies, in part, to motivate their students to perform well. Grades provide two kinds of information about a student's abilities and learned knowledge: "internal" information that informs the students themselves about the university's assessment of their talents and competencies; and "external" information that informs faculty, other institutions, and potential employers about student performance. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), freshman grading policies were changed in the fall of 2002 in an effort to better prepare freshmen for the academic rigors of sophomore year and beyond. Prior to the 2002-03 academic year, all freshmen at MIT received "hidden" grades in "both" semesters of their freshman year. A hidden grade is a "letter" grade that is communicated to the student but is recorded as "pass/no-record" on the student's official transcript. Beginning in the fall of 2002, freshmen received hidden grades for the "first semester only" of their freshman year. Therefore, pre- and post-2002 freshmen received the "same" internal information on their grades in the second semester, but post-2002 freshmen were subject to this information being shared externally. In this study, I estimated the causal impact of MIT's having "hidden" versus "externally-shared" grades on subsequent student decision-making and academic performance by taking advantage of the natural experiment that was inaugurated by this policy change. I looked specifically at the impact of the grading-policy change on freshman spring semester GPA, credit units taken, the probability of declaring early sophomore status, and the probability of taking a more mathematically advanced version of Physics II. I found that freshmen with "externally-shared" grades, on average, earned higher GPAs, had a higher probability of declaring early sophomore standing, took slightly fewer credit hours, and had a slightly lower probability of taking a more rigorous version of Physics II, compared to freshmen with "hidden" grades second semester. Also, for three of my four outcomes, I found that the estimated effect of the grading-policy change differed by the level of a student's pre-college academic performance.