Quarter in review- academics. Grade non-disclosure is good

I used to have more mixed views on grade non-disclosure until now. The general bottom line is that grade non-disclosure affects the attitudes MBAs have in their 2 years at business school, which on the whole are a net positive for everyone. Too right, particularly for me! Having just received my grades today, I can now reflect on my total “performance” this last quarter. Like I’ve mentioned previously, I probably took one too many courses given how much time I spent on recruiting events amongst other things. Put this together with the fact I am not used to the quarter system, it made the pressure on my final few weeks quite taxing (hence the lack of blog posts). So I certainly directly sacrificed academic performance for recruiting events and expansion of knowledge. Generally I did well on the subjects that I had interest in and was relatively strong in, such as E-commerce, against other courses such as accounting, where I have less interest not to mention being not an expert (they are plenty of bankers about!). Now just expand this view across the whole class, each student with their own different course loads, strengths & priorities, it would be hard to even consider grades alone as a single measure of “performance” over the quarter, especially for those who spent a lot of time on recruiting events, club events, golf, socializing etc... Everyone should truthfully ask themselves how they think they did taking into account all the goals they set themselves this quarter. Fundamentally, what matters in the courses is what you learnt. I think I've learnt a great deal, but if I could have changed anything, I would have probably turboed accounting (better professor), and exempted modeling for quantitative analysis, I actually think by making this “better” choice, I'm sure I would have simultaneously improved my overall grades and increased my learning! So future Stanford MBA1s, pick your core courses menu extremely carefully! Of course for me, taking E-commerce was an excellent choice, I felt that this had some overlap with some of the core course, and in some ways some of the principles are helping me in the case interview practice I’m currently doing. I even got to learn a huge amount about microfinance through the group project I spearheaded on this course. In effect it brought consulting and banking experience expertise to a non-profit microfinance start up that a classmate has launched- everyone walked out extremely fulfilled. So what do I have to say about those dedicated all their time on academics and did very well? Good for you! But I have to ask, what did you sacrifice? Not much- than you are a star! Did you meet you goals- even better.... Measure against thyself, use the grades to see how you did relative to the class, but bear in mind that in an environment such as Stanford getting top marks could well mean sacrificing other things, unless you’re a mega genius, or have covered it all before in undergrad (in which case, you should have either exempted, turboed some courses or focused on non-academic areas to really get value added on your $120K). So I'm all for grade non-disclosure, but concerned with the recent news that Harvard have now withdrawn their policy on it starting with the class of 2008 , this could force other schools to follow in response to tightening the focus on academics. However, there is a subtle difference with Stanford, where the grade non-disclosure is a student norm rather than institutionally imposed policy. Last I checked, most students still want the norm to continue, not surprising since it was a key reason why many students chose Stanford in the first place. If Stanford got rid of the policy, I think it would take out a huge differentiating aspect to the school. So maybe Harvard students could opt to collude to maintain a “norm”, but I doubt it would stick given the competitive stereotypical nature of their students. I think the result could be to make Stanford increasingly more differentiated to applicants who truly value the attitudes & values that come with grade non-disclosure- academic risk taking, focused recruiting, personal goal setting, basically enjoying what each student considers are the finer things in life. Bottom line, a great make up of students on an MBA program- and many people value that above everything else, including recruiters.