Snippets

Just two weeks ago, the University of Maryland's University Senate passed a legislation that officially changed the school's GPA standard. This new change has sparked a lot of debate and opinion across the university campus from both students and faculty. A huge wave of both positive and negative sentiment is clearly evident coming from both the students and the professional staff alike. Added stress and difficulty seem to be just some of the reasons why many stand against the new legislation. But on the other hand, this GPA standard is a standard that many other universities have already implemented long ago. One senior student at Towson says, "UMD kids are notorious for having deceivingly high GPAs, the school didn't calculate plus and minus." Faculty senators also reason that the new standard was put into place because "it was in line with the grading systems of this university's peer institutions."

Up until this point, student GPAs were calculated by a standard A through F (4,3,2,1,0) rubric. But now, the newly implemented standard will calculate pluses and minuses into the Grade Point Average. An additional .3 points would be awarded for a plus and a .3 points would be subtracted for a minus. For example, a B+ is now a 3.3, a B is a 3.0, and a B- is a 2.7. Before this new standard, all B's were equally calculated as a 3.0. In other words, the typical A- student would see his or her GPA drop while the typical B+ student would see his or her GPA increase.