Some Collegians Make Grade With A-Plus

Derivatives and integrals aren’t Stanford University student Mark Dominik’s area of expertise. So when he enrolled three years ago in a calculus course, he hit the books -- and made good use of his professor’s office hours.

On the day of the final, “No one’s pencil was down when the professor called time,” recalled Dominik, who studies French and Italian literature. “It was a fair test, but it was a hard test.”

When grades were posted, he was surprised to find himself among a handful of students who received an A-plus.

“I came out thinking I did a good job,” Dominik said, “but apparently I did better than I thought.”

His grade point average did better too. At Stanford, the A-plus grade is weighted differently from a regular A. It’s worth 4.33 points while the A is worth 4.0.

Now, at several other schools around the country, students are seeking the same opportunity. The University of Vermont and Indiana University’s eight campuses are reviewing student requests for A-pluses that carry extra weight. Arizona State will begin offering the weighted A-plus in the fall.

Few colleges award the A-plus. Of those that do, most -- such as UC Davis -- don’t give the grade more weight than the standard A. But Stanford has been awarding A-pluses that carry extra points for more than 25 years, according to university Registrar Roger Printup.

“It certainly makes sense in light of the fact that for other grades in which the plus is used, students receive an additional 0.3 grade points for the plus,” Printup said.

Robin Burns, a history and English major at Stanford, has accumulated six A-pluses, boosting her GPA to 4.019.

“They’re kind of necessary because of grade inflation,” Burns said. “When you did really well in the class you used to get an A, and now an A doesn’t mean very much.”

Students on a smattering of other campuses apparently agree. Last spring at Arizona State, 3,000 signatures were collected on a petition that asked faculty to award the grade.

“This was the most dramatic event that the provost of our university had seen in a long time,” said Antonio Garcia, president of the Academic Senate, who compares grading to “the nuclear arms race.”

He added: “Everyone wants the latest, greatest weapon.”

That weapon -- the weighted A-plus -- will be rolled out at Arizona State next fall in a program that will be reviewed after three years. One caveat: Though students’ GPAs can be boosted by the A-plus, their overall GPAs cannot exceed 4.0.

“We decided that if you have an A-minus [which carries a weight of 3.67 points] and an A-plus, they should cancel each other,” Garcia said.

Some academics and administrators wonder whether an A-plus should be awarded at all.

“If you can’t determine the top of your scale is excellent, and you’re going to have somebody go above excellent, maybe you’re not cutting the pie correctly in the first place,” said Thomas Bilger, president-elect of the American Assn. of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

Others worry that if the A-plus is weighted differently, faculty members will be pressured to award the grade more often.

That is one concern among professors at the University of Vermont, according to Alison Pechenick, a lecturer in computer science who heads a subcommittee looking into the weighted A-plus.

“The faculty is probably 50-50 split,” said Pechenick, who favors the change. She added that some worry that a weighted A-plus will “produce and lead to more grade inflation, possibly because not everyone will give an A-plus for the same thing.”

At Indiana University’s eight campuses, faculty members also are cautious, said Mary Fisher, senior co-secretary of the University Faculty Council, which represents all campuses.

For now, the weighted A-plus is on the agenda of a student affairs committee.

“We’re letting it go through the process,” Fisher said. “Currently, students are already scrambling for every point they can get, they are very grade-conscious. It really doesn’t reflect a change that would be that beneficial.”

Stuart Rojstaczer, a Duke professor of environmental science who conducted a recent study on grade inflation, said he discovered the A-plus is “more a symbolic” grade that doesn’t significantly inflate GPAs.

“To my mind, the A-plus is a nonissue vis a vis grade inflation,” Rojstaczer said. “Grade inflation is being driven at the lower end of the grading spectrum.”

Beyond an ego boost, the most competitive students might reap some advantages from the A-plus.

The Law School Admission Council, for instance, gives extra points for A-pluses. And many employers and some post-graduate programs ask for students to submit their cumulative GPAs; the pluses can’t hurt.

Of course, grading can be subjective: Various professors have different criteria for awarding the A-plus.

Philip Zimbardo, a psychology professor at Stanford, said the grade is for students who “deserve special recognition.” He normally awards the grade to the top 10 students in a lecture course that enrolls about 300, “where even many of the best students get lost in the anonymity jungle.”

Rojstaczer is far more selective. “I’ve been teaching for 10 years,” Rojstaczer said. “I’ve given one A-plus. That person [an undergraduate in a graduate-level course] was truly heads and shoulders above anyone.”

Some students said they are often surprised when the grade appears on their transcripts -- primarily because they don’t know which professors award them.

“I’ve never seen it on a grade breakdown on a syllabus,” said Chrissy Working, who studies biological sciences at UC Davis. “I know that once I got one, I started trying for them. It’s sort of like an addiction.”

Just ask Esteban Pauli, a computer science major at UC Davis who has received 15 A-pluses. But because the university doesn’t give the grade extra points, Pauli’s GPA is still below a 4.0.

Bummer, huh?

“We’ll see,” he said, adding that his applications to graduate school are still out.