For first-years just arriving on College Hill, there are a staggering number of decisions to make during an already tumultuous time. You have to choose four courses to enroll in — out of over 1,000 options and with no requirements. Learning to find your way around campus and figuring out which dining halls are good can take a while. And, of course, making friends is far from easy. The list is endless and overwhelming, but one thing is clear: academics are not the only thing on the top of a first-year’s mind. As a first-year just getting started in college, the most important thing is finding one’s footing on campus, not getting straight As. For first-semester students, the University should require all courses be taken pass/fail, enabling students to explore without fear of failure and find their place on campus.
With the option to take any class Satisfactory/No Credit, Brown students already have the freedom to explore. However, this policy still allows students to fall into a cycle of prioritizing academic perfection over genuine exploration and intellectual curiosity. Mandatory S/NC grading removes incentives to take every class for a letter grade, allowing students to explore outside of their comfort zone.
Changing the S/NC policy for first-year students would encourage them to explore courses in unfamiliar and challenging subject areas without fear of getting a bad grade. As CJ Lair ’28 pointed out in his recent column, first-years are entering Brown with an increasingly predetermined vision of who they are — both academically and personally. In The Herald's 2026 First Year Poll, only 5.5% of students were undecided in their intended primary concentration, and over 50% said they were certain or very certain that they wanted to pursue their intended concentration. Whether this is a result of increasing pre-professionalism on college campuses or job-market uncertainty, this runs against the spirit of Brown’s Open Curriculum which urges students to be the architects of their own education and explore courses in a variety of disciplines. In her 2025 Convocation speech, President Christina Paxson P'19 P'MD'20 implored first-years to explore unfamiliar subject areas where they might struggle, explaining that “getting something other than an ‘A’ is not the end of the world.”
Clearly, Brown’s leadership wants students — especially first-years — to explore more and worry less about the letter grades they receive. But this vision cannot be realized when students are concerned that taking courses S/NC will harm their chances of getting into competitive graduate programs. This problem has an easy fix: when classes are required to be taken S/NC, first years won’t be punished for non-letter grades on their transcript. The first semester of college is exactly the time when students should be exploring unfamiliar subject areas without fear of failure. There are endless more subjects to explore in college than there were in high school and taking courses in unfamiliar subject areas might lead students to discover new passions. Given Brown’s reputation as a prestigious University and its history of sending students to top graduate programs while having already unorthodox grading, taking this next step in encouraging exploration policy would not hurt educational outcomes.
In a recent op-ed, Brown Economics Professor Robert Serrano argued that Brown should restrict students’ ability to take upper level courses in their concentration S/NC. I disagree with his assertion that taking a course S/NC is less conducive to learning. Rather than fixating on what letter grade they’ll receive, taking courses S/NC encourages genuine engagement with the material. When students aren’t constantly worried about how their essay score will impact their grade down to the tenth of a percentage, they might be more likely to take risks and be creative in their work. In other words, without the fear of failure — or just the aversion to getting a B — students will prioritize learning for the sake of learning over learning for the purpose of getting an A.
Additionally, there is an important distinction between academic rigor and pressure that is lost in Serrano’s piece. Academic pressure results from a competitive atmosphere in which students are fighting for top grades, whereas academic rigor is an inherent part of the classes themselves that remains largely unaffected by the grading system. I do not believe that Brown has a culture of competition on par with similarly ranked schools, but I do believe that many students feel pressure to excel academically — and that usually means getting all As. Implementing mandatory S/NC first semester in students’ first year reduces academic pressure on students who are still adjusting to college level academics while preserving rigor. And again, because this policy only applies to students for a single semester, any rigor that is lost is contained within their first phase of learning.
Several schools have similar policies in place. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology employs a model that helps ease the transition to college-level academics: all classes are taken pass/fail in students’ first semester; second-semester courses are graded ABC or No Credit — which doesn’t show up on a transcript — and beginning in sophomore year the school’s typical grading standard begins. Similarly, at Swarthmore all first semester courses are taken pass/fail to give students time to transition to college work. Professors give students written reports on their performance and “shadow grades” or the equivalent of internal letter grades that are then used to evaluate students applying to specific majors. The University of Michigan planned to implement a similar policy in 2027 but it was delayed due to criticism over the policy’s perceived coddling of students. Brown already has a reputation as the Happy Ivy and has faced criticism over grade inflation. Maybe it’s time the University embraces its reputation as a school that enables its students to thrive both academically and personally through its unconventional grading policies.
This policy does not prevent Brown from maintaining internal records that reward students for their hard work. By awarding S with distinction on students’ internal transcripts, students who wish to graduate with Honors retain their eligibility. This also gives first-years the opportunity to prove their mastery of a subject even without receiving grades on their external transcript. Brown could implement a similar system to Swarthmore and give students internal letter grades that they can use for their own academic improvement and as benchmarks for their work.
The first semester of one’s first year is a uniquely formative period in a student’s time at Brown, and a prime chance for self discovery. Academic burnout is a real problem on college campuses, and the stress of Ivy League academics makes this even more pronounced. For most of their life, it is likely that getting perfect grades has been admitted students’ top priority. Many have been trying to perfect themselves academically since kindergarten, enrolling in the maximum number of AP classes in high school and devoting countless hours to get an A. This isn’t what the first semester of college should be about. It’s time for Brown to take the next step in encouraging exploration and make first semester pass/fail.
Max Mooney ’29 can be reached at max_mooney@brown.edu. Please send responses to this column to letters@browndailyherald.com and other opinions to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
