FAQ For “Not Yet” Scores

A portfolio score of Not Yet (N) means that the faculty and staff members who read your portfolio concluded that it did not demonstrate all of the required writing skills. This could happen for a variety of reasons: you may have some gaps in your writing abilities, you may have chosen pieces for your portfolio that didn’t fully reflect your writing skills, or the assignments you completed in your first two years might not have allowed you to demonstrate all of the required writing skills. Either way, a score of Not Yet means that you have not yet completed the portfolio requirement.

Melanie Cashin, Director of the Academic Support Center, or Kristen Vogel, Assistant Director of the Writing Center, will help you develop a plan for passing the portfolio by the end of your junior year. Once your writing demonstrates the skills that your readers found lacking in the portfolio, Writing Center staff will work with the Registrar’s Office to record a Pass on your portfolio.

Please keep in mind that an N score is not a judgment of your overall abilities as a scholar. It’s not a measure of your intelligence, your talent, or whether you belong at Carleton. It’s not even really a measure of your general ability as a writer. Rather, it’s a very specifically calibrated measure of certain writing skills that are essential for effective academic writing.

There’s a reason we call this score “Not Yet” and not “Failure”: the message the college is trying to send through the N score is that your portfolio does not demonstrate the writing skills you’ll need to develop before senior comps and graduation. We think of the score as an offer of help from the college to better prepare you for the academic challenges ahead, and we hope you take it in that spirit.

Before you file for graduation — and ideally before the end of your junior year—you’ll need to change your portfolio score from Not Yet to Pass.

In order to do that, you’ll need to do three basic things:

1. Meet with a Writing Center staff member (Melanie Cashin or Kristen Vogel) and create a plan
2. Follow through on the plan
3. Check in with the Writing Center at the end of each term to discuss your progress and goals for the next term (if applicable)

Find more details in the “Guide to Completing a Not Yet Portfolio.”

No, you can’t revise and resubmit your portfolio, and yes, you really do have to make a plan and follow through.

The issue here isn’t that the portfolio as a whole or the individual essays in it are flawed. The issue is that, based on your portfolio, your faculty readers think you may need to develop certain writing skills a bit more before you graduate from Carleton. Going back and revising the portfolio itself now that you have their feedback won’t really demonstrate development — it will just demonstrate that you can respond to feedback on a specific document (this is an important writing skill in itself, but not the only skill you’ll need). To significantly improve your writing skills, you need to actually continue writing.

Besides, this process is meant to be forward-looking and to work for you. Writing Center staff want to help you craft a plan that truly addresses your unique needs and circumstances.

Students on academic leave are not required to participate in the portfolio revision process at all until they return to active enrollment. If you expect to be on leave at any point in your junior year, please notify Melanie Cashin and, if possible, let her know when you plan to return to campus.

If you will be on OCS in the term after you receive the Not Yet score (i.e. fall of your junior year for most students), please contact Melanie Cashin as soon as you receive your score notification, so you can meet over Zoom, ideally before you depart for your OCS program. During this meeting, you will draft a plan for the term based on your circumstances.

If you’re not already working closely with Writing Center staff (through the TLP or regular meetings), you will check in with the Writing Center at the end of the term to discuss your progress. If relevant, staff will review writing you submitted to the Moodle site that term. Once you and Writing Center staff agree that all skill gaps have been addressed, the Registrar will change your portfolio score from Not Yet to Pass, and your portfolio requirement is complete.

Once you receive a score of Pass, there will be no indication on your academic record that your score was ever anything else.

That depends on two things: What you need to work on, and how much you’re able (or willing) to work on it. It’s possible to complete the process after a single term, depending on your circumstances and how much you prioritize your plan.

The vast majority of Not Yet students are able to complete the process and earn a Pass by the end of their junior year, as long as they make a sincere attempt to address their writing plans.

While it’s technically possible to still be working on a Not Yet score in your senior year, this can complicate your Comps project and advanced major coursework. Because of this, the Academic Standing Committee (ASC) will reach out to students who still have Not Yet scores at the end of their junior year, and they may initiate academic review for those students.

Writing portfolio scores do not appear on your transcript, and the only people at Carleton who have access to them are administrators who can see your advising records. That includes your advisor, the Dean’s office, the Registrar, the Director of Writing Across the Curriculum, and the Director of the Academic Support Center. It does not include individual course instructors or other staff members you might interact with (the Fellowships Office, potential on-campus employers, etc.).

Furthermore, once you complete the portfolio process, your score will change from Not Yet to Pass, and there will be no indication, even in your advising records, that you ever had a Not Yet score. Thus, a Pass received through this revision process is no different than a Pass received through the portfolio itself.

Technically, you must complete the portfolio requirement in order to file for graduation. So, if you don’t complete the process, you don’t graduate.

That should obviously serve as an incentive to take the process seriously. That said, in the roughly 20 years that the portfolio program has existed, less than five students have failed to graduate because they didn’t meet the portfolio requirement. Again, this process isn’t meant to be a barrier between you and graduation; it’s meant to help you develop the skills you need to graduate. As long as you make a sincere attempt to address the writing skills your readers expressed concerns about, you should be able to earn a pass score before graduation.

This isn’t required, but taking one or more WR courses is an option, especially if your 300-level major courses don’t include much writing. WR courses generally offer more writing instruction and more opportunities to practice your writing skills, and so taking one or more might speed up the process of passing your portfolio requirement.

In particular, if you feel like you never quite learned the fundamental skills of academic writing (framing a thesis, integrating sources, structuring an argument over the course of an essay, etc.), then you might consider taking English 109: The Craft of Academic Writing, which is offered every winter and spring term. You’ll find a more detailed description of that course here.

As a Not Yet student, you’ll automatically be connected to the Writing Center on 4th Libe. Melanie Cashin, the Director of the Academic Support Center, is available for one-on-one meetings, and peer writing consultants are also happy to help. Multilingual students, in particular, are encouraged to meet with Kristen Vogel, the Assistant Director of the Writing Center and Coordinator of Multilingual Writing Support. Schedule appointments and learn more at the Writing Center website.

You should also speak to your major advisor about your portfolio and ask if they have any recommendations. Communicating with your advisor is particularly important if your major requires a lot of technical or field-specific writing (e.g. programs, proofs, problem sets) that might be hard for tutors and instructors outside your major field to read and give you useful feedback on. If you’re struggling with a particular skill in your major classes or unsure how your portfolio plan will work with your major courses, your advisor can help.

If you don’t schedule your initial meeting with the Writing Center, follow the plan you created, or check in with the Writing Center at the end of each term, we will place a registration hold, meaning you won’t be able to enroll in new classes or change your schedule until you make up the missing steps. We’d really prefer not to do that, though, so please help us out.

If a class genuinely has no writing of any kind, it may be difficult for you to successfully complete your plan (unless it’s entirely dependent on attending workshops). However, most Carleton classes have some writing in them, even if it isn’t a traditional essay. Short assignments, journals, lab reports, essay exams, problem sets, and anything else that requires you to present your ideas in textual form count as writing and can be used in service of completing your portfolio requirement.

The Writing Center may be able to pair you with a TLP partner in your major or a similar field. Regardless, Writing Center staff are trained to work with writers from all majors and in various genres.

If you’re opting to submit work to Moodle, submit all of your writing, even pieces that aren’t “traditional essays.” The major purpose of the portfolio requirement is to help you develop the writing skills you’ll need in your major, so it only makes sense to submit the writing you complete for your major coursework.

Yes, but if at all possible you should include a note (just a sentence or two on the essay itself) indicating how you personally contributed to that assignment.

Yes, please do, especially if your major will regularly require you to write in a language other than English (this includes computer code). If Writing Center staff cannot read a significant portion of your writing in a given term, they’ll seek out the assistance of a faculty member who can.

Writing assignments in non-traditional forms (e.g. multimedia pieces, oral performances, physical objects, web pages, etc.) can most certainly count toward your portfolio requirement. If you have an assignment that you’re unsure how to upload, you should contact Melanie Cashin.