I know what A-B-C-D-F mean but what about V? X? HP?

 I am looking at LOTS of transcript of students who applied for my program REU-CAAR so I sometimes come across grades that I don't understand. The transcript does not have a guide to them, and I have been unable to find the meaning on line.

Normal grades of A,B,C,D,F possibly with + or - I DO understand, as do you, though standards differ from school to school.

UMCP also has 

P for Pass in a course the student chose to take Pass-Fail

W for withdrawing from a course

WW which will be on all courses in a semester- so the student dropped out that semester 

XF means failed because you cheated. I suspect people outside of UMCP would not know that, though the `F' part looks bad. 

NG seems to mean they placed out of the course somehow. Might stand for No Grade. 

I've seen

V at Georgia Tech. Lance told me that means the student audited the course. 

Q at University of  Texas at Austin.I do not know that means. 

X at Depauw. I do not know what that means.

HP at Harvey Mudd. I do not know what that means.

WV at Harvey Mudd. I suspect some kind of withdrawal but I don't know. 

SX at Cornell. I do not know what that means.

E is used at some schools for FAIL and at other schools for EXCELLENT

Some schools in India use O for Outstanding- higher than an A. 

Fortunately it is rare that I NEED to know a grade that has a letter I don't understand the meaning of. However, another problem is names of courses. 

Analysis could mean Calculus with or without proofs, one or many variables. 

Discrete Math could mean an easy course on how to proof simple thing or a hard course in combinatorics. Often I can tell if its a Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, or Senior course so that may help tell what it is. 

Foundations could mean... a lot of things. 

So what can be done? The only thing I can think of is to have schools include a legend on their transcripts that tells what each grade means. Why hasn't this already been done? Speculation

a) Harder than it seems to do.

b) Not really an important problem (this blog is the only time I've every seen it mentioned)

There may be some tradeoff between how easy something is to do and how important a problem is to solve in order to take action. And this problem does not reach that threshold.

This would seem to be a problem for admissions to grad school as well, yet I have not heard of people complaining about it there either.