In late January, KAIST introduced Pass/No Record (P/NR), a new grading system which would be applied to undergraduate students admitted in 2023 and onward. The P/NR grading system converts  letter grades ranging from A+ to D- or Satisfactory (S) in the S/U system to Pass (P), and assigns No Record (NR) if a student fails to achieve the above grades.

This system is applicable up to nine credits per semester for students’ first two regular semesters. The courses taken as P/NR do not follow the conventions of the course retaking policy: courses marked as P cannot be retaken, while courses marked as NR will be considered as first enrollment if it is retaken. The letter or S/U grades of the courses selected for P/NR application would be converted and confirmed into P/NR, in batch, during the grade posting and correction period. The converted “hidden grades” will be available to students and faculty such as academic advisors and heads of  department for counseling and guiding purposes only. They will not have any efficacy as official grades of the student.

KAIST anticipates the novel grade marking system to “enhance adaptability of freshmen” and “expand opportunities for challenge and experience”. As the freshmen are allowed to individually choose the courses to which P/NR would be applied, KAIST expects students to step outside their comfort zone, experience various fields of study, and expand freshmen’s opportunities in exploring majors to “produce next-generation leaders of science and technology.” P/NR is expected to reduce freshmen’s academic burden and therefore help them adapt to college life. It is also expected to ameliorate the learning environment such as being more defiant towards studies and to design more personalized timetables with courses that interests the freshmen.

Some students agree that P/NR would reduce the study load for students in their freshmen year, allowing them to explore extracurricular activities and select their majors more thoughtfully  by taking courses they are interested in. The P/NR grade marking system is also being used in other prestigious universities such as MIT and Brown University to better students’ adaptability to the campus life and to encourage research and challenge. However, others argue that this novel system might lead to a decline in the academic capabilities of students, inflated grade point average (GPA), and possibly poor attitude in classes which would disadvantage other classmates who are not graded based on the P/NR system. For example, students who can apply P/NR could show poor participation in a team project, posing a problem of equity in grading. While the P/NR system is introduced to increase the creativity and experience of freshmen in a variety of fields, the concerns currently being posed must also be addressed. It is yet to be seen how the implementation of the new system will unfold.