On Hampshire College, Grades/ Ungrading, & Graduate School Applications

A quick explainer

I often brag about being a Hampshire College alumna. Of all the colleges/universities I’ve attended and worked at, Hampshire had the most profound impact on me because it shaped who I was as a person during my most formative years. Although Hampshire has had to outwork hypercapitalism, mission creep, and in/ex/ternal chaos — it is still an excellent educational environment. The short of it is: with everything I know as a higher education scholar if I could do it all over again, I would still go to Hampshire College.

Anyway, someone asked me on twitter —

“How does GPA work at Hampshire College? Do they have a system for calculating that for the purposes of reporting to grad schools?”

This came up because I mentioned I don’t believe in grades, and part of that is due to the Hampshire educational experience.

I responded:

We don’t have GPAs. All my friends left Hampshire and went to T14 law schools or Ivy League/ Top 50 grad programs. @/hampshirecolg actually was ranked a Top 10 producer of elite graduate student[s] a couple years in a row. So it doesn’t matter.

But it’s deeper than that…

Oh look, a bunch of #HampshireCollege Black Excellence… Classes of F06, F06, F07, F08, & F18 (Hampshire assigns class years by entry rather than graduation, because while four years is typical, it’s not a standard).

Hampshire College does not have grades, tests, GPAs, nor majors. It is a build your own educational experience. Every student (there were 1400 of us in my day) has their own self-designed education and when I was there we had 1400 unique majors. Simply put, it’s a graduate school for undergraduate students, because you build a committee, select your own program of study, and complete a culminating project of your choice.

Hampshire is broken up into three academic divisions rather than majors/ minors. Here’s how my Transcript explains a Hampshire education to graduate admissions/ transcript reviewers:

How to read a Hampsire Transcript 101

How to read a Hampsire Transcript 102

Make sense?

Good.

Every class includes a written evaluation rather than a grade. These evaluations detailed my class performance. Here’s one as an example from my second year of college in January 2010. The evaluation discusses both my strengths and areas for growth, and we recieved one of these for every course.

Course evaluation for a Jan Term (winter) course in 2010 as a college second-year

So, what does it all look like in the end? My Hampshire transcript is 22 pages long. It would be longer, but I took EIGHT courses across the Five College Consortium split between Smith College, Amherst College, and Mount Holyoke College. I never took a UMASS Amherst class because I went during add/drop and it wasn’t for me.

Anyway, below is a copy of my final evaluation from my Division III/ culminating experience at Hampshire. As you can see it lists my strengths and areas of growth across the thesis project and my time as a TA.

My final evaluation for the Division III process at Hampshire College (1/3)

My final evaluation for the Division III process at Hampshire College (2/3)

My final evaluation for the Division III process at Hampshire College (3/3)

So, how does a Hampshire College education fair? Everyone in the photo above is Black AF, educated AF, and has significant academic prestige if that thing matters to you. I hold degrees from Hampshire College, Teachers College-Columbia University, and the University of Georgia. I am a national award winning early career faculty member. But tbh, I don’t care about none of that. What I do value is helping Black girls and women in education (and expounding from there). I also think I can speak for everyone in the photo above when I say the same is true for them too.

So yeah, graduate schools know Hampshire. And the end result of a Hampshire education is whatever you make it. :-)

P.S. This site won’t let me add full alt-text for these photos. Does anyone have suggestions?

BMW