Let's talk about grades

Final exams are almost upon us, and I want to talk about grades. Specifically, my grades.

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My final degree Grade Point Averages (GPAs) have been:

• Biology Undergrad: 3.31/4.3 (around B+ or 75% average)
• Mechanical Engineering Undergrad: 2.81/4.3 (around B- or 70% average)
• Masters: 3.94/4.3 (around A- or 85% average)
• PhD: 4.0/4.3 (around A or 90% average)

Overall weighted average: about 74%

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What conclusions can we draw from these numbers?

• Am I a better biologist than mechanical engineer?
• Am I a better grad student than undergrad student?
• Am I 74% smart?

To answer this, we need a better understanding of what these grades are evaluating. I have taken around 80 university courses, which I estimate translates to about:

• 100 final exams (theoretical and lab)
• 200 midterms (1 to 3 midterms per course)
• 400 assignments (2-10 assignments per course)
• 20 group projects
• A lot of quizzes, lab reports, presentations, essays

The conclusion that can be drawn from these numbers is that I have met about 74% of the evaluation criteria within my university education. And most of those grades have come from timed written exams.

These numbers don’t tell us much about the types of questions I’ve had to answer in the evaluations or how the evaluations were graded. They also don’t tell us about the things I’ve learned that weren’t on the exams, how much I’ve retained since these evaluations, or how well I am able to apply this knowledge in other settings.

But more importantly, my grades do not tell us anything about my impact on society or provide insight on how good of a person I am. They do not measure my contributions to the community or describe the value I bring to a team. My grades don’t even indicate what kind of research I can produce, or how successful I will be in my graduate studies.

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The only difference between these numbers are my opportunities.

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I now qualify for scholarships. Grade-dependent doors have opened for me, which come with money and recognition. I now have the option to work fewer jobs to support myself and am in a better position to improve academically. For most people, low grades are a catch-22: low grades mean no scholarships, no scholarships mean working to pay tuition and costs of living, working means less time to study, and less time to study results in lower grades. Had I lived in any province other than Québec, or if I had been an international student, I would likely not have been able to afford to be a student for long enough to improve my grades.

Grades function as a gate-keeping mechanism. Grade-based qualification systems assume that past academic performance determines future potential. This means that we use grades, or how well a person writes exams, as the main metric to assess whether that person has permission to participate in higher education spaces, and as a result, allows or denies them entry to entire career paths.

Society values the academic trajectory above any other methods of learning. Many jobs require a minimum of an undergraduate degree just to apply, even if a person has years of experience and has developed proficiency in a field by learning on the job. In other words, we assume that bad exam writers make bad hires. Not only does this limit someone’s immediate job prospects, but it also systematically excludes people from engaging in big global issues. By prioritizing traditional university degrees, we are exclusively selecting people who can sit and write timed exams to work on our important challenges.

It is not to argue that learning doesn’t happen in university or through writing exams – it absolutely does, and it creates many unique opportunities for learning that do not exist in any other context. It is, however, perhaps time to ask important questions about the correlation between timed exams and issues such as global warming, disinformation, housing crises, and food shortages. Who are we excluding from our systems? What other ways can we effectively measure learning? How can we broaden our definitions of excellence to embrace more of our society?

A 74% average means that I have been allowed to participate in the academic system. As a consequence of the low tuition in my province, I have been able to accept this participation, and have been given access to the spaces that discuss and work on the big challenges of today. Our current learning systems are built entirely around grades and rely mostly on timed written exams to generate those grades. If we want to diversify the types of people we have working on big challenges, we need to expand our entrance mechanisms, evaluation approaches, and metrics for success.

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And as a reminder for anyone about to enter final exam season:?

• Grades are poor indicators of your ability and poor predictors of your potential.
• Your value can’t be measured in grades, and your grades do not reflect your value.
• This is tough, do your best, and give yourself grace.

So until we rethink the system, wishing everyone the best for finals. I'm rooting for you!

Andréa Cartile is a PhD Candidate and?Public Scholar?in mechanical engineering at?Concordia University. She has been a self-proclaimed mediocre student at Concordia since 2009 for the sole purpose of learning as much as possible.