RadGrad aims to “provide students, faculty, and advisors with an alternative perspective on the undergraduate degree program”. The alternative perspective is called the RadGrad Degree Experience and it replaces GPA as a single metric of success with a three component metric called myICE. The ICE stands for innovation, competence, and experience. In my opinion, however, the “myICE” component is slightly out of reach for students who are introduced to RadGrad in their junior year, like me.
I noticed there is a bottleneck situation where close to 570 students are at level two of the 6 levels on RadGrad(at the time of writing there are 983 registered in total ), another 300 hundred students sit at level 1 and merely 6 students are level 6. Perhaps this is by design, but I think this is due to the grading system on RadGrad.
Each of the three myICE component are capped at 100(you can go over the limit). At first the ring is greyed out, that means you have to put opportunities into your planner for the ring to fill up. For each validated opportunity, you will be awarded points correlated to the opportunity and the ring will be colored in accordingly. For example, if I completed the ACM ICPC opportunity I get 15 innovation points and my innovation ring is colored in based on that 15/100 ratio. So far it makes sense and the innovation component is relatively easy to achieve, if you pick 4 opportunities each worth 25 points, you can close it relatively easy.
The problem begins at the competency ring. An A for a class gets you 10 points, B gets you 8, and anything below a C is 0. I feel like that is a big discrepancy but that isn’t the biggest concern. One problem is how awarding the points work. All of the classes below ICS 300 level give 0 competency points(at least the one’s I have in my planner are like this), so your ring won’t budge if you have them in you planner, but suppose I receive an A, would I still be awarded 10 points? Then there are classes that are worth 6 points, if I get an A I would be awarded 10 points as stated, but does my ring close 6% or 10%?
Let us assume that no classes under 300 level courses provide you any points regardless of your grade letter and you receive 10 points for an A and it closes 10% of the ring for any 300+ courses. As a junior second year student, I only have 12 more classes that are above 300 levels to take. 10 points for an A means I need to pass 10 classes with that grade. Seems like this system emphasizes more on GPA then it was designed to.
Regardless of how the competency section works, the opportunities and a chance to build or enter a community exceedingly outweighs the confusion. RadGrad provides you first hand of everything that is happening at Manoa and even Hawaii. I might not be able to reach level 6 anytime soon or at all, but I am able to reach out to students that have become a level 6 elite and establish a network with them. Or perhaps just stay a plebe and connect to students at my level and build an army that will eventually become the elites’ bosses(jk, or maybe not). RadGrad is far from perfect but it is a great place to start for students to plan for their future.