When the Class of 2019 graduates this spring, the pluses and minuses grading system will graduate along with it.

Beginning with the Class of 2020, the school implemented a grading system in which pluses and minuses do not factor into students’ GPAs, but may appear on transcripts at individual teachers’ discretion. This means that teachers may choose to report all grades having redacted pluses and minuses, or they may choose to include pluses and minuses; however, regardless of the choice they make, the school will continue to calculate GPAs solely based on a scale with no pluses or minuses.

Either way, GPA is calculated without factoring pluses and minuses, even if they show up on students’ transcripts. Per this system, it is possible that classes in which students receive plus grades do not appear with pluses on transcripts, whereas classes in which students received minus grades may appear with minuses. As a result, many students remain confused and conflicted about the new grading scale.

According to assistant principal Brian Safine, the school eliminated pluses and minuses because students are more likely to score a minus grade than a plus grade, which harms their GPAs. By disregarding pluses and minuses, overall student GPAs increase.

“Even our sister school Los Gatos doesn’t factor pluses and minuses into GPA, so it’s an effort to try to be on a more similar grading scale,” guidance counselor Monique Young said. “At the time we changed the grading scale three years ago, we were trying to encourage students to make good choices, be more balanced and not so worried about their grades.”

Although some teachers enter pluses and minuses into the Canvas grading program, all A’s are worth four points and all B’s are worth three points, in terms of GPA calculation. (Honors and AP classes received an additional grade-point boost.)

Junior Sanmati Nakil said she supports the new system. “At first I was sad that my B+ in Chemistry honors was shown as a B, but then I realized that’s way better than getting a B- in something,” Nakil said. “The new grading scale is a really nice safety — in Chem last year I could afford to focus on other finals because I only needed to aim for a 90.”

Based on this new system, the criteria for valedictorian and salutatorian have changed. For the Class of 2020 onward, it will be possible that there will be multiple valedictorians, as it is now more likely that students earned equally high grades in their AP and Honors classes, according to Safine.

Although criteria in this regard have loosened, some students fear they will not receive the credit they deserve when colleges look at their grades. And although, according to Young, most colleges do not take pluses and minuses into account, some students prefer the previous system.

“It harms students whose grades are high A’s who are putting in the work and not getting the recognition for it,” sophomore Aindri Patra said. “It’s also bad for students who have borderline grades because if they don’t do as well on the final, their grades can drop a whole letter.”

Although the school implemented the new grading scale in part to urge students to stress less about their grades, Patra brings up a possible downside to the system: the grading system could discourage some students from working as hard.

“If there’s no distinction between a plus and a minus, people don’t really have the motivation to work for those top grades,” she said.