Are you smart? Probably! After all, there is book smarts and street smarts.
In the corporate world, book smarts will serve you well. Although, in urban areas, street smarts may prove to be as valuable.
In many developed countries, society uses the grade point average to define a person’s intelligence and/or their potential. Grades typically reflect a person’s ability to remember course material to answer the exam questions.
Internships and collaborative projects are exceptions. Although, is it the best way to evaluate students? A grade doesn’t say much about the student’s aptitude and some schools have noticed that flaw.
Fortunately, there are several schools that don’t use letter grades to evaluate their students.
Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies
Fairhaven is a liberal arts college at Western Washington University. At the college, students evaluate their own performance for their college classes. However, their self-evaulations are combined with narrative assessments from their teachers.
Fairhaven’s classes reflect a seminar format rather than a lecture format. Class sizes are small with an average maximum of 20 students.
Alverno College
Alverno is an independent, Catholic liberal arts college. It has historically been a women’s college and remains with a female majority of students.
The college offers undergraduate and graduate programs. Although, the undergraduate programs are only open to women.
Alverno uses an abilities based curriculum. Like Fairhaven, the college also combines student assesments with narrative evaluations to grade their students.
Hampshire College
Hampshire is a private, liberal arts college. It’s not only a top college in the New England area, but it’s a top college nationwide.
It ranks #39 among U.S. colleges and universities for graduates who earned a doctoral degree. Furthermore, 65% of their alumni have at least one graduate degree.
Besides using narrative evaluations to grade students, the college is unique in other ways. For example, their curriculum isn’t based on four years of learning, but instead it’s based on three divisions (Exploration and Working Across Disciplines, Concentration, and Creating Knowledge).
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