Johns Hopkins has had this since forever
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.
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-...