Instructors may choose whether they would like to assess students using letter grades or numerical grades. Many classes that assign papers or essay exams to assess students, particularly humanities and social science seminars, will exclusively use letters for grading.

Yale’s official letter grades do not correspond with a specific range of numerical grades. Thus, if an instructor elects to use numerical grades for individual assignments, they should create a number-to-letter-grade conversion system and make sure their students understand how their final grades will be calculated. This grading practice is the norm for STEM courses and frequently used for humanities and social science exams.

Canvas has a default numerical to letter grade conversion, but faculty can adjust the conversion to fit their departmental or school norms and policies.

Some classes allow students to rework term assignments in order to help students attain mastery regardless of their initial skill/knowledge level. The instructor gives students one or more opportunities to respond to instructor feedback, re-work their product, and re-submit an assignment. Some instructors allow for students to rework and resubmit until an assignment reaches the quality and grade a student desires.

Some instructors may choose to assign grades along a certain distribution. Sometimes the curves are structured to benefit students’ grades, such as adding free points to an exam until a certain number of students achieve scores of 100. 

Other curves seek to deflate grades by adding limits and quotas for the share of students that can receive each letter grade. However, it is important for instructors to note that when the Ad Hoc Committee on Grading in 2013 proposed recommending grade distributions to deflate grades, this particular proposal was met with significant student opposition including organized protests. The faculty ultimately voted against adopting this proposal. A quota system can lead to unfair and inaccurate reflections of student work. For instance, if 40% of students earn an A on an exam based on the rubric, but the quota is set such that only 30% of student should receive an A, a deflationary curve will not accurately reflect student performance.

There is no University-wide policy on late submissions, except those governed by the Academic Regulations concerning late or postponed work (i.e., “dean’s extensions”, which permit late work under five conditions: severe illness, death of a family member, comparable emergency, observance of religious holidays, and participation in varsity intercollegiate athletic events). Some departments have strict policies, such as lowering the assignment’s grade by half a letter for every twenty-four hours an assignment is late. Consult with your department or school to learn if they have specific guidelines. 

In practice, enforcing late-grade deductions is up to the instructor’s discretion. Instructors of upper level seminars in the humanities and social sciences are often very flexible about deadlines. In these spheres, Yale culture tends to prioritize “better work” over rushed submissions. In addition, upper level seminars and lecture sections often practice a “midnight” deadline, implying any time before the next morning (e.g. papers submitted at 4:30 am are hardly ever penalized). Given Yale College’s cultural norms regarding deadlines, instructors who desire to implement very strict deadlines and penalties should make this explicitly clear in the syllabus.

Some instructors at Yale will mark a paper A-/B+ to let a student know that their paper or project was borderline between two grades. This kind of ambiguity can be especially confusing for underclassmen, and instructors who choose to use in-between grades should clearly communicate their pedagogical purpose.

Sometimes, special marks must be reported to the Registrar in place of the usual letter grades. The Registrar provides additional information about these marks along with the end-of-the-term packet.

• Credit/D/Fail: This is essentially the “Pass/Fail” option for undergraduates who want to take a course without the pressure of letter grades impacting their GPA. It is common for students to select the Credit/D/Fail option. However, an instructor has no way of knowing if a student is taking the course as Credit/D/Fail and is not permitted to ask, though students may choose to volunteer that information. At the end of term, these students are assigned a letter grade just like any other student, and the registrar changes the letter grade to “Cr” (for grades A through C-) or keeps the given letter grade (for grades D through F). Students may use up to four Credit/D/Fail during their time at Yale and have an additional two for their first year that expire at the end of that academic year.
• Withdrew (W): Students who decide that their performance in a given course is not desirable may choose to drop the course until 5PM on the last day of classes before reading period in that term. If dropped before midterm, that course will not appear on the transcript. If students drop a course after this date, the transcript will record a “W”, which stands for “withdrew”. Such a designation is not typically desirable. Instructors should offer high-quality feedback — either through grades or an in-person consultation — to students well before the midterm so they can decide whether or not to drop a class without the stress of incurring a “W.”
• Other special marks are less common. They include SAT (satisfactory), TI (authorized temporary incomplete), and ABX (authorized absence from final examination). These are issued by deans of residential colleges.

There is no University-wide policy on attendance and no minimum number of classes that students are required to attend; instead, students are expected to show up regularly.  Lectures typically do not take attendance, and in many if not most courses, attendance has no direct impact on grades. 

If an instructor desires to implement an attendance policy, they should establish clear guidelines on their syllabus for how a missed class or section will affect student grades. A common policy for seminars that meet twice a week allows three absences before decreasing student letter grades by one half (on their class participation, final project, or even overall letter grade) for each additional absence unless the student has a Dean’s Extension (which varies across residential colleges). However, Yale instructors generally accommodate students with reasonable excuses with or without the Dean’s form.