The University of Michigan will nix letter grades for first-semester freshmen, a policy the school hopes will help students “start strong” and “curb the mental health crisis.”
“Our goal is to help first-year students acclimate to the demands of college and allow intrinsic motivations to guide personally meaningful academic journeys—core elements of a liberal arts and sciences education,” the school wrote in announcing the policy, which will go into effect this fall.
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The program will apply to students in the school’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. The college is the university’s largest, enrolling roughly 3,500 first-year students in the fall 2025 semester. Undergraduates in Michigan’s business and engineering colleges will remain unaffected by the change.
“LSA is investing in students’ well-being and growth by fostering a culture of connection and collaboration—rather than competition,” the university added.
First-semester freshmen will receive grades on a pass/fail basis. The university plans to continue recording letter grades for compliance and advising, though they will not be reflected on the student’s transcript or in their GPA calculation.
Grading will revert to Michigan’s traditional model by the student’s second semester.
The school’s move is not unprecedented. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology adopted a similar grading scheme in 1968. MIT now gives freshmen either “pass” or “no record” grades for courses during their first semester, where any grade of a “C” or above is considered a “pass.” The university then specifies whether a student received an “A,” “B,” or “C” during their second semester.
The University of Michigan’s move comes as universities across the country are reevaluating their grading procedures. Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted in May to cap “A” grades at roughly 20% of undergraduate enrollment beginning in fall 2027.
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Yale University, meanwhile, recently released a report from its Committee on Trust in Higher Education. Among other recommendations, the committee called to curb so-called grade inflation at a school where nearly 80% of undergraduate grades in the 2022-23 school year were “A-” or “A.”
“As grades cluster, they cease to convey useful information about relative student achievement,” the committee wrote. “And since grading practices vary across departments and programs—with some awarding A-range grades to about half of students and others to virtually all—grades are not comparable in any meaningful sense across courses.”
