When I looked at my 3.5 grade point average, I realized that it would be much worse if each of my 90 to 93 percent and 80 to 83 percent grades hadn’t counted as an A or B, but rather an A- or B-.

That’s the difference between a proud 4.0 and the not-as-good-looking 3.7.
There are two arguments for a plus and minus grading system. The first is that graduate programs won’t like our grading system.

So, I asked around, and, overwhelmingly, graduate schools didn’t even look at the note on the bottom of our transcript that warns that we don’t use minus grades.

And if they did notice, it didn’t weigh heavily enough to really affect their decision.
The second concern is that some professors would rather give, for example, a B+ than an A to a student who has, say, an 89.6 in the class.

I’m sure that this does occasionally happen, but how much more often does a teacher just decide to round up to a 90 and give the student a 4.0? Or, how much more often does a student (me, for example) earn a 90, 91 or 92?

If you are one of those students who earn borderline grades, wouldn’t you rather get a full A, B or C on those grades than risk the occasional B+ or C+?

In short, while a change might help an occasional student, it would cause far more harm than good.

I believe that having no minus grades gives us an advantage over students at other universities.

Alex Fournet is an international
business sophomore, an SGA College of Business senator and the SGA Student Affairs chairman. He can be reached at [email protected].