If you are part of the Mount Holyoke College community, you may have recently seen a post on Facebook about a month ago that said that Moho came up with the letter grading system. This is the system used for academic grading in America. But do we really have Mount Holyoke to thank for this system? I was curious about the college’s role in the establishment of letter grades, and I had the internet at my disposal, so I decided to consult Dr. Google.
The short answer is yes. Multiple articles, including one from Slate, attest that Mount Holyoke College was the first college to use a letter grading system in 1897. At that time, an E was used instead of an F and the scales were different. For example, today to get an A grade, at most colleges, you need to score somewhere between a 90-100%. But in 1897, to get an A you needed to score somewhere between 95-100%. According to Slate, professors later changed the E grade to an F because many students thought that E stood for excellence. And for the record, Mount Holyoke’s website links to a Washington Post article that says they came up with the grading system.
Another fact that these articles tended to point out is that the first letter grade technically came from Harvard in 1883. However, it was only one letter grade given to a student. There was no indication of what the score meant or that there were any other letter grades used. For that reason, Harvard is not credited with creating the grading system.
So, Mount Holyoke developed the grading system. Why did I not know this before? One of Mount Holyoke’s biggest programs is its Psychology & Education special major and its teacher licensure program. I would have assumed that the college would heavily advertise that it developed the system for which education in America is essentially measured. However, therein may lie the problem. Letter grades have become a metric for student learning, but they do not explain how a student came to that point. Letter grades cannot tell us what a student’s strengths are or give feedback to the student. In addition, letter grades can become inflated or deflated depending on the school, so even the metric is not completely universal. Mount Holyoke College itself emphasizes in its application that grades and standardized test scores are not the end all be all. It considers a student’s high school performance relative to the school they went to, the personality that comes through in their essays, and less tangible qualities such as intellectual curiosity, thoughtfulness, leadership, creativity, civic engagement, and social conscience. In fact, Mount Holyoke does not require applicants to submit their standardized test scores, like the SAT or ACT, because they feel that these tests do not measure any of those qualities.
Whatever the case may be, it is still fun to know where our grading system came from since we all follow it and, in some cases, define our self worth around them. Remember not to stress too much about grades, especially since they are not a representation of your success or who you are.
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