This past weekend, the UNC-system Association of Student Governments tabled a proposal that called for the adoption of the A-plus 4.333 system, aiming to clear up the language of the proposal to fit grading procedures across all schools in the system before voting on it.
As written, this proposal would give students an opportunity to earn a grade of A-plus, which would bring a GPA weighting of 4.333 with it. ASG should vote to support the implementation of this resolution once the details are worked out surrounding it.
Adoption of the A-plus 4.333 system would help acknowledge the difference between students who perform in the upper and lower range of each letter grade. This resolution also addresses potential complications that could arise from GPA inflation by instituting a 4.0 GPA cap. In the rare occasion that a student earns enough A-pluses to raise his or her GPA above 4.0, the cap would go into effect to offer further consistency.
Under the current system at UNC-CH, students who perform exceptionally well are not graded exceptionally. Since an A- counts as a 3.7, students should at least have the opportunity to counteract this with an A-plus. This demonstrates inconsistencies found in the current system as every letter grade besides A has plus or minus variants.
Of the 16 universities in ASG, two schools already use an A-plus system.
In fact, the UNC-CH School of Law already uses an A-plus system to award instances of exceptional performance.
Six UNC-system schools further complicate grading by not accounting for variants in any letter grade, meaning students’ grades are not specified beyond A, B, C, D and F. By passing the A-plus 4.333 resolution that would account for these details, ASG would help alleviate this problem.
