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Harvard Is Getting Serious this Time
- JC Guedon
- Jul 28
- 4 min read
Just last week, Harvard professors held a historic vote. With nearly 70% in favor—an overwhelming majority—they passed a reform to the grading system.
In any given Harvard course, the number of students receiving an A cannot exceed 20% of total enrollment. In other words, for a small class of 20 students, no more than 4 can get an A; for a large lecture of 100 students, no more than 20 can get an A. Professors are allowed an additional 4 "discretionary" A's per course, meaning the small class of 20 could have at most 8 A's, and the large class of 100 could have at most 24 A's.
In addition, Harvard will use percentile rankings (your relative standing across the entire class) to determine campus awards and honors. The new grading system will take effect starting in fall semester 2027, Harvard is getting serious.
Why does Harvard feel this reform can't wait any longer? Harvard is Getting Serious!
Because Harvard's grading has simply become too inflated! Internal data revealed a startling trend: the rate of A grades among Harvard undergraduates surged from 44% to 63% over a decade.
There are stark disparities in A rates across Harvard's various divisions.
The Humanities division and the Theater, Dance & Media department stand at a staggering 78% and 91% respectively, far exceeding the roughly 56% seen in STEM fields. The English department is an especially severe case—its A rate was 47% in 2014 and has now reached 82%, a jump of 35 percentage points over the decade.
When nearly 60% of students at America's top-ranked university can get an A, grades have essentially lost their meaning.
The Prisoner's Dilemma
Now that Harvard has fired the first shot, will other top US universities follow suit? The answer: everyone's watching from the sidelines.
The reaction across elite higher education perfectly illustrates a classic game theory problem—any school that acts unilaterally puts its students at a competitive disadvantage, so every school is waiting for someone else to take that risk first.
Princeton's Dean of the Faculty, Michael Gordin, put it bluntly and briefly: Harvard's decision to overhaul its own grading policy is its own business—Princeton has no plans to follow suit.
This isn't the first time Princeton has faced this issue. Back in 2004, the school implemented a grade-capping policy aimed at limiting the proportion of A grades to within 35%.
But the policy was abolished in 2014. The reason? Rising student anxiety and an intensifying culture of competition.
Princeton economics professor Henry S. Farber summed up the lesson learned:
“At the time, Princeton students resented the policy. Since other schools hadn't made similar changes, having their own grades curbed could put them at a disadvantage—lower grades than peers elsewhere—in competition for jobs and graduate school admissions.”
Although Princeton's own tracking research showed that the grade-capping policy had no negative effect on graduates' outcomes, student discontent proved to be the overriding factor, and the policy ultimately couldn't be sustained. Professor Farber worries that Harvard may be heading down the same path.
Wellesley College, an elite women's liberal arts college, also saw its reform effort fail. From 2004 to 2019, Wellesley enforced an even stricter policy: for any course with more than 10 students, the class average grade could not exceed a B+. Under pressure from students, this policy was ultimately abolished in 2019.
Wellesley economics associate professor Akila Weerapana commented that Harvard's grading reform won't work—it will only leave students feeling more aggrieved.
Concerns About Harvard's Grading Reform
Professors at other US universities worry that Harvard's grading reform could disrupt classroom dynamics.
Mark Kuperberg, an economics professor at the elite liberal arts college Swarthmore, offered an analogy: putting a "ceiling" on grades is like price controls—superficially fair, but in practice it undermines the signaling function of grades, causing large numbers of students to cluster at one grade level (like A-), which weakens the system's value as a meaningful evaluation tool.
Cornell University materials science and engineering professor Michael Thompson issued a direct warning:
Once professors are told they can only give out so many A's, students end up in competition with each other. I won't help my classmate, because that might reduce my own chances of getting an A.
University of Chicago classics professor Clifford Ando focused on a different dimension:
UChicago professors worry that any university-wide grading policy represents an infringement on individual instructors' classroom autonomy.
US Universities with the Highest GPAs
Over a month ago, a student who had been accepted to both Stanford and Harvard posted online asking for advice on which school to choose.
The original poster planned to attend law school after finishing their undergraduate degree, and US law school admissions place heavy weight on GPA and LSAT scores. So they wanted to choose the university with more lenient grading.
A Stanford alum revealed that the two schools were roughly comparable in terms of grading leniency. However, it now seems that once Harvard changes its grading system, Stanford could well become the more attractive option for students.
In fact, it's not just Harvard—the entire Ivy League now has notably high average GPAs across the board.
According to RippleMatch data, Ivy League schools take 4 of the top 5 spots on the list of highest average GPAs.
20 US Universities where it is easiest to get an A
When choosing a school, ranking alone isn't enough—the stability of its grading policy matters just as much.
After all, for students, GPA is the "hard currency" of transfers and further education, and choosing a school with more generous grading often allows for a higher margin of error.
Harvard's move has broken the silence, but whether this "prisoner's dilemma" sees any real breakthrough remains to be seen.
Original source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/I2rHGr5wk8Lx5XwddYVLTgTranslated from Traditional Chinese.
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