Advisers Can Access Freshmen’s Grades Early

Students anxious to receive their grades will have to remain patient until Feb. 6. Beginning with this past fall semester, the Office of the Registrar has decided to withhold all students’ records until the office has uploaded every grade and vetted them for accuracy.

But while students restlessly await their grades, freshman advisers will have access to their advisees’ grades immediately after they are uploaded, according to an e-mail from the Registrar obtained by The Crimson.

The Crimson was not able to confirm if upperclassmen advisors were also granted the same advance access.

Freshman advisors were asked not to disclose grades to their students until they are officially released.

The e-mail said the advisers should “refrain from sharing grade information with [their] advisees until final grades have been confirmed and released to students through the my.harvard.edu portal on Monday, February 6.”

FAS Registrar Barry Kane wrote in an e-mail that this practice assured that “when students are able to view their grades, they are looking at accurate information that has been reviewed and reconciled by the Registrar’s staff.”

The grades are disclosed in advance to advisers in order to encourage them to “initiate conversation” if a student appears to be in any serious academic difficulty.

While students understand that time is needed to process and confirm the grades, many expressed frustration at not being able to receive their marks before the beginning of the second semester.

Some students said knowing the previous semester’s results would help them better plan the semester ahead.

“It’d be nice if we knew earlier, then we would choose courses better,” said Spenta P. Kutar ’09, who said she would have liked to know her grades in order to decide whether to continue with economics.

Allison K. Turbiville ’09 said that the feedback would be more helpful if the grades were received earlier.

“By the time you get them back, you don’t care because you’re not in the class anymore,” Turbiville said.

“It’s a flawed system,” Rogelio J. Mercado Jr. ’09 said, adding that he nevertheless understands the bureaucracy behind it.