Grad School Part 2

Okay folks, part two as promised.

Part of my follow-up post acceptance was to tour campus and meet some faculty to make sure it would be a good fit and could work for what I needed and wanted to accomplish. After working with schools here, I was conscious that secondary school grading systems are vastly different from the A-F grading system used in the States. One of my top questions was what to expect in grading systems in order to mentally adjust so I could understand feedback from professors. I was pleased to be told the University uses an A, B, C, D system just like the US. Whew, I was thinking!

Well, classes begin, first assignments are completed, and subsequent grades are received. Not awful I was thinking at this point, but certainly not as well as I had hoped to do. However, I felt I had a reasonable idea of where I was at and could focus on improving for the next round of assignments. They came and went, and I was still feeling as if I should be doing better, but was unsure how to best focus improvement efforts. I therefore sought assistance from a professor who had been particularly transparent about her open-door policy.

When I explained that I was a bit disappointed in my grades and requested some constructive feedback for how I might improve for remaining assignments (as all course had only 3-4 assignments worth the total grade), she looked a bit confused and said advised that she did not feel I had hardly anything to improve on. I thought this was odd but moved on thinking I would simply have to put in more time reading, revising, etc.

When we reached about week 10 out of 12, I began looking at what was required for this term in order to be eligible to continue with the Master’s study next year. As a part of that, a minimum GPA was required. After a quick calculation on a 4.0 grading scale based on the grade percentages I had received thus far, I had a near melt-down when the figure I arrived at was notably below the required GPA.

I think it is reasonable to say that by this point I was feeling quite worn down and a bit stressed due to the high workload of 5 courses in addition to the number of hours I was working, as well as trying to finalize plans for our trip to America that was at that point only two weeks away. However, something just did not feel right so I decided to keep digging. Lo and behold, I stumbled on the University’s grading scale. Was that ever the find of a lifetime! I discovered that while I had been looking at percentages and thinking, from my American background, that I was receiving the equivalent of a C or a very low B, I was in fact receiving nearly all A grades. Turns out the, 80-100 % all falls within the A grade range. Relieved does not even begin to describe how I felt! But it did teach me to ask a few more questions before assuming that “the same system” is truly the same.

Part 3 I will share some details of how this term has gone J