So you’re one of the lucky few to receive straight A’s your freshman year. You’re coasting until you get to Kenan Professor of Government Harvey “C-” Mansfield’s sophomore year gov tutorial, and he gives you–gasp!–an A-. Now your perfect 4.0 is a less little than immaculate. What is the quintessential overachiever to do? Just aim for an A+ like all of your friends at Duke and Columbia, of course! Oh, wait–Harvard doesn’t give them. FM went on a search to find out the philosophy behind Harvard’s grading policy.
FM’s first point of attack was the Senior Tutors. Although they are reputedly Harvard’s fountains of all types of information, the tutors did not advance FM’s quest–each referred FM to page 57 of the Student Handbook, which proclaims that the highest grade that a Faculty of Arts and Sciences student can receive is an A, sans that extra little congratulatory decal. When asked about making any changes in the grading system, Leverett House Senior Tutor Catherine Shapiro responded, “Certainly there has been no such movement...in the two and a half years I have been here...to make the A+ part of the normal grading scale.”
Undeterred, FM headed to the Registrar’s Office. After an arduous trek up Garden Street that evoked some sort of sympathy for Quadlings, FM was sent back to the Yard with no info. Tons of phone calls to the Registrar and answering machine messages later, FM was still at the start of the journey. Next stop: the deans.
Heeding Freshman Dean Wendy E.F. Torrance’s advice to “direct your inquiry to the Office for Undergraduate Education,” was only met with disappointment; when FM received little information from Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Vincent Tompkins, who “didn’t know the history behind our current grading structure,” we knew that something had to be up.
Don’t be discouraged—perhaps without this fabled A+, your evil TF might be more apt to give you an A. Don’t get your hopes up, though—only five students have received perfect GPAs in Harvard’s history.
FM did, however, get an A+ in navigating Harvard bureaucracy—does that count for concentration credit?
