Expanding on Pass No Record

Expanding on Pass No Record Alright, my first serious, thought-out blog entry in quite some time. Im discovering something about sophomore year, well, a lot of things, but a few key ones. 1) Classes are harder 2) Classes are in your major 3) Nothing is new anymore During your first semester at MIT youll be taking a lot of classes over a wide variety of disciplines. These are known as GIRs (pronounce each letter, dont call them grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs). Unless you kicked some serious butt in a crazily academic high school or took a bunch of classes at a local college, youre going to have to get some core classes out of the way, including single and multivariable calculus, physics (mechanics and EM), chemistry, and biology. No ifs, ands, or buts, you will take these classes (or pass out of them). There are a bunch of different classes, each of varying degrees of difficulty, in each of these topics to choose from, but thats for a later entry. I came to MIT wanting to be a mechanical engineer. I love building things, piecing things together, and constructing a product. I did not come to MIT to learn math, chemistry, or biology. As such, I struggled/didnt really enjoy these classes. Yes, I know, its MIT, were good at these classes, and as a whole MIT is very good, but individual students sometimes loathe these subjects. Over your four years at MIT youll experience a lot of things that make MIT seem like the big bully at the playground punching you repeatedly in your beautiful face, but one thing MIT really prides itself on is making sure you have an enjoyable and fair first semester here. MIT doesnt want to make you cry (though it happens), so they have this AWESOME system called Pass/No Record. Several bloggers, including Yan just a couple of days ago, have mentioned Pass/No Record (P/NR) but nobody has really discussed it. Heres the gist of it. At the end of your first semester here (September through December) you will get a set of grades, just like you normally do. The thing thats different between first semester MIT grades and any other grades is that ALL FIRST SEMESTER MIT GRADES ARE THE SAME. Thats right, you heard me, everybody will come out of first semester with the same GPA: 0. A zero GPA!? OH NOES! Oh yeses. Pass/No record means that if you pass a class you receive a P on your transcript. If you fail a class it shows that you never even took it. That means its impossible to have an F on your first semester transcript. Let me say that again. YOU CAN NOT GET AN F ON YOUR FIRST SEMESTER TRANSCRIPT The other side to that is that you cant get an A on your first semester transcript. YOU CAN NOT GET AN A ON YOUR FIRST SEMESTER TRANSCRIPT Which has several additional implications. YOU CAN NOT GET A B ON YOUR FIRST SEMESTER TRANSCRIPT and YOU CAN NOT GET A C ON YOUR FIRST SEMESTER TRANSCRIPT What you can get is a bunch of Ps. At MIT youll hear some Pass/No Record mentioned a lot. Youll hear sentences like Dude, just punt it, youre on pass/no record or Dont worry about it, youre a freshman or No. You didnt get an A. You got a P. Just like _________ over there having fun. You got the same grade only he had more fun. Upperclassmen are really careful not to let the freshmen tools brag about their straight As. Nobody likes a tool, nobody likes to hear about your Perfect GPA when everybody knows full well that the only thing you got was a 0 GPA and less time to meet new people and hang out with friends. Taking advantage of Pass/No Record is something else youll hear mentioned a lot. This can have several meanings. One is if you fail a class. Youre taking advantage since youll have no record. Another way to take advantage is to score the lowest possible passing score on everything and still get the same grade as everybody else. This is what I did. Its really nice to know nothing matters when you get a PSET back and it says this on it: Dont get me wrong, I learned more than Ive probably ever learned during my first semester here. Its not like you can get by without working, I spent many sleepless nights and early mornings fighting my way through problems sets and working harder than Ive ever worked before, I just also spent a lot of time doing other things. I have pretty awesome proof that I took advantage of P/NR, like my first chemistry exam. Check out my score breakdown, per question. Righteous! Passed it! First two questions, rockin. Next two questions? **** Last question, pity points. Or, how about my third chemistry exam? The first and fifth questions were just so wrong! lol, its all good though, because it was P/NR and I ended up passing the class. The same with math and with physics (which I accidentally got a B in, go figure). I think I failed at least one test in every class except chemistry and still passed all of my classes. I also did a ton of other awesome fun things that I never got a chance to tell you about since I wasnt an MIT blogger back then. Basically, I loved first semester of freshman year, didnt mind getting Cs (and by Cs I mean Ps) in all of my classes, and I feel that Im better now for the relationships and other experiences I took advantage of than if I had locked myself in my room trying to get good grades that are invisible. In summary, here are the important things to take away from this: 1) As, Bs, and Cs all show up on your transcript as Ps first semester of freshman year 2) Ds and Fs dont show up at all 3) You have to retake the class you failed but it doesnt show up as having taken it before 4) Take advantage of P/NR, it only happens once