+1.

As an alum I've observed both:

* kids who partied hard first semester since grades didn't matter only to struggle second semester

* kids who benefited from this transition because they didn't go to Hotchkiss

I ended up in both buckets and I have mixed feelings about this since it helped and hurt me.

In the long run - it really didn't matter.

I was about to post the same; they adopted the pass/fail first semester policy in 1971.

But then I was just horrified to read apparently they got rid of that system in 2017 [1], and now it's a normal letter grade?! Assuming that Hopkins still skews quite harshly on grading, that's an awful regression.

[1] https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2016/05/university-to-...