Guaranteed Grades?

It’s pretty much common knowledge that once you get into Grad School, the lowest grade that you can possibly get is a B. In fact, if you ever get anything lower than a B, you’re flat just not doing the work.

So does this basically amount to “guaranteed” grades? Well, in some respects I guess it does. On the other hand, it is assumed that people at a Graduate School level should be performing at least at this level.

Does this mean that you can simply “coast” through grad school and get your MBA without even trying? Not hardly. Most MBA classes have a “participation” component – even those online. Don’t participate in class and you don’t get a passing grade.

It’s a very different grading system that many people are accustomed to but it does its best to mirror how the “real world” operates. In the real world, there is no extra credit for effort. You either pass or you don’t. If you pass, it’s either by a little (ie: you get a B) or by a lot (ie: you get an A). Anything other than that is just not acceptable. Same thing in Grad School.

One of the reasons for this is that the entire philosophy is different. In college, the emphasis is on learning and memorizing the “tools of the trade” – algebra, history, English, accounting, and so on – and then being able to recite them back in the proper order on a test. You were then graded based on your answers to the test.

Grad School is different. It’s assumed that you already have the basics down. What Grad School concentrates on is the application of the information, not necessarily on the information itself. It doesn’t really matter whether or not you’re an “expert” in accounting, for example, so long as you can apply the proper accounting principles to a company in a case study. That’s the different between “knowing” information and “applying” information.

The bottom line is that in Grad School, you really don’t have to worry about failing a class (unless you really intend to). Since the emphasis is on the application of knowledge, not the memorization of it, grades seem to lose a lot of their importance.

Don’t get me wrong. You still have to study. It’s still hard work. The difference is that you’re not trying to get an A just for the sake of getting an A. Your emphasis is on actually understanding the material.

Hiram