Letter to the Editor: Lack of evidence

To the Editor:

In your recent editorial ("Everyone needs grades," DP, 1/11/06), your staff argues that Wharton students need to "learn accountability." But part of accountability is being able to support dramatic claims with facts.

Your staff offers no evidence to support its assertions that the current policy is "stifling what should be a vibrant academic climate," that the current scheme "has dampened the academic environment at the institution."

I doubt that McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and Bear Stearns share your concerns. At the School of Medicine, students do not receive grades for the first semester. However, I found my MS1 classmates to be extremely hardworking and conscientious.

We recognized that just like in business, performance in medicine goes well beyond A, B, C ordinal assessments and encompasses collaborative practice skills, teamwork and open discussions of classwork.

Several outstanding medical schools, such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford, have a no-grade, pass-fail policy that lasts even longer than does Penn's.

And based on the students I've encountered at residency interviews, their educations have hardly seemed to suffer.

Jonathan Criss

Fourth-year Medical student

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