Under pressure to fall in line with other elite medical schools like Harvard, Yale, Duke and Stanford, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine has replaced its letter-grading system with a pass-fail system.

Instead of students receiving 13 possible letter grades ranging from A+ to F, they now receive one of four marks—honors, high pass, pass or fail.

The new system began in April 1.

“This sort of ties in to a national trend and wave of trying to figure out how to assess very bright people and do so in a way that encourages them rather than discourages them,” said David Nichols, vice dean for education at Hopkins.

Nichols said the change at Hopkins was instituted partly due to concern that the letter-grading system turned off potential students and fostered an unhealthy, competitive climate.

A survey conducted by Hopkins’ admissions office of 129 medical students who had been accepted there but decided to go elsewhere showed that of the 62 who responded, a majority said Hopkins’ old grading system convinced them not to enroll.

At Harvard Medical School (HMS), students receive either a mark of satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

Third and fourth-year medical students are graded with marks of high honors, honors, satisfactory or unsatisfactory.

Vanessa G. Henke ’02, a first-year at HMS, said that after working hard to get into medical school, a letter-grading system only fueled excessive student competition and Hopkins had perhaps taken a step in the right direction.

“If Hopkins had changed the grading system when I was applying, maybe I could have considered it,” Henke said.

Raj Malhotra ’00 who had been admitted to Hopkins Medical School but enrolled at HMS said even though he chose HMS mainly due to the school’s programs, the grading system at Hopkins gave him the final conviction to enroll at HMS.

“Medical students are very busy, and such a [letter] grading system gives them more stress,” he said.

HMS administrators said the change in the grading system at Hopkins is not going to affect the number of applicants to HMS.

“We have no reason to believe the change in grading system at Johns Hopkins will affect the number of applications to Harvard Medical School,” said Mohan D. Boodram, HMS director of admissions and financial aid.

Boodram said the HMS admissions office has no indication that grading systems are a major factor among students in choosing a medical school.