Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation

[Anonymous]

Grade inflation is as serious a problem as you make it up to be. For the most part, it’s easy to segregate who is and is not the best student- and that’s not really indicative of who is and is not the best in lab-which is why grad programs ask for recommendation letters. If you’re a stellar student with no publications and no history of scholarly research, you’re gonna get torched in admissions by a mediocre student who’s got a publication or even grant record.

[Anonymous]

I’m really surprised these are the responses of parents with college aged kids. My kid works like a bull and their work is harder than when I was in college (I graduated as a physics major from Yale; they’re a computer science major at Princeton). Kids are expected to do 12x more in coursework and in getting internships, professional clubs, etc.

[Anonymous]

“For the past decade or so, the College has been exhorting faculty to remember that some students arrive less prepared for college than others, that some are struggling with difficult family situations or other challenges, that many are struggling with imposter syndrome-and nearly all are suffering from stress.”

“Unsure how best to support their students, many have simply become more lenient. Requirements were relaxed, and grades were raised, particularly in the year of remote instruction. This leniency, while well-intentioned, has had pernicious effects.”

Faculty have also adopted new methods of evaluation:

Many of us shifted from high-stakes exams to more frequent lower-stakes assignments, believing that this would help students retain the material. A number have found, however, that lower-stakes assignments are more effective at rewarding effort than at evaluating performance, giving students the false sense that they'd mastered material that still eludes them. Similarly, ffaculty shifted from exams and papers to alternate modes of assessment, such as creative assignments and group projects, in the hopes of increasing student engagement with their courses. A number struggled, however, to assess these assignments in a sufficiently differentiated way. Finally, some faculty have eschewed conventional grading, turning instead to ‘ungrading’ or ‘contract-based learning’ or other systems in which students earn As for completing all assigned work. There is a pedagogical case to be made for these alternate approaches, but they're fundamentally at odds with our current grading system, which relies on grades to differentiate.”

Crimson article: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/27/grading-workload-report/

I have two kids at two different ivies both in the Top 10, neither Harvard. They have high-stakes exams, complex psets, conventional grading. humanities courses require extensive reading and papers. Primary sourced research papers are the norm not the exception. Challenging complex exam problems that stretch the students ability to analyze and apply are the norm. There is more inflation than there was 25 years ago but it remains the case that most Stem classes have a median of B or B+ and most non-stem are median A-. Getting 3.8+ overall is hard, requiring intensive study, not the average(or below median, as it is at Harvard).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I went to Princeton during the years of grade deflation. It was the best thing ever. As an English major, only 30% of the class could get an A on a paper. I got a lot of Bs but when I got an A it mattered. Once I left college, I realized I was a good writer but not an excellent *Princeton* writer and I was okay with that. It’s sad that they got rid of the grade deflation because it was hard for Princeton students to compete with Harvard/ Yale grade inflation.

Can I ask what your first job was, what you do now, did you go on to further schooling?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m really surprised these are the responses of parents with college aged kids. My kid works like a bull and their work is harder than when I was in college (I graduated as a physics major from Yale; they’re a computer science major at Princeton). Kids are expected to do 12x more in coursework and in getting internships, professional clubs, etc.

Same with mine, also Ivy. They and friends work all the time, not just on courses but on research, internships, resume building. It is much more intense than their friends at publics(none of the publics are Berkeley)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:At our private school that doesn't have grade inflation, ivies mostly look at the gpa as a number and don't put much weight on rigor. Kids game the system by choosing the non-rigor course to get their gpa as high as possible. The ivy admits are not nearly as smart as kids who go to MIT, Georgia Tech, CMU, JHU.

Flat out not true. That is some serious copium.

100% agree. unhooked ivy admits are among the most competitive course rigor and stats around, as does MIT. JHU ED, GT OOS and CMU-non-CS are much easier to get into from our private as well as the public stem magnets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My child goes to one of MIT/Uchicago/Hopkins/Northwestern (no point in saying which) and works so hard for As. The school uses various methods to cap the number of “top achievers,” and she was specifically told in a class this year that typically only 5% of the students leave with an A. Some people here will call them grinder/striver schools, which is just another way of saying that the non-rich, non-legacy riffraff should stay submissive and happy with their lot. But these schools and a few others seem to be so far above Harvard’s academic standards at the moment. Between the lax undergrad standards and the appalling number of Harvard and Yale Law grads who seem to have never read the Constitution, I think a drop in many Ivy League schools’ rankings and popular perception is just a matter of time.

Not true. We have details of the curves for stem classes at JHU, Chicago and Northwestern. That would be unheard of for an "A" require top 5%. Not even close. All three of those schools grade like the less-inflated ivies Penn Princeton Cornell

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My child goes to one of MIT/Uchicago/Hopkins/Northwestern (no point in saying which) and works so hard for As. The school uses various methods to cap the number of “top achievers,” and she was specifically told in a class this year that typically only 5% of the students leave with an A. Some people here will call them grinder/striver schools, which is just another way of saying that the non-rich, non-legacy riffraff should stay submissive and happy with their lot. But these schools and a few others seem to be so far above Harvard’s academic standards at the moment. Between the lax undergrad standards and the appalling number of Harvard and Yale Law grads who seem to have never read the Constitution, I think a drop in many Ivy League schools’ rankings and popular perception is just a matter of time.

Not true. We have details of the curves for stem classes at JHU, Chicago and Northwestern. That would be unheard of for an "A" require top 5%. Not even close. All three of those schools grade like the less-inflated ivies Penn Princeton Cornell

How do you have curve details for JHU, Chicago, NU, Penn, Princeton, and Cornell?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
“For the past decade or so, the College has been exhorting faculty to remember that some students arrive less prepared for college than others, that some are struggling with difficult family situations or other challenges, that many are struggling with imposter syndrome-and nearly all are suffering from stress.”

“Unsure how best to support their students, many have simply become more lenient. Requirements were relaxed, and grades were raised, particularly in the year of remote instruction. This leniency, while well-intentioned, has had pernicious effects.”

Faculty have also adopted new methods of evaluation:

Many of us shifted from high-stakes exams to more frequent lower-stakes assignments, believing that this would help students retain the material. A number have found, however, that lower-stakes assignments are more effective at rewarding effort than at evaluating performance, giving students the false sense that they'd mastered material that still eludes them. Similarly, ffaculty shifted from exams and papers to alternate modes of assessment, such as creative assignments and group projects, in the hopes of increasing student engagement with their courses. A number struggled, however, to assess these assignments in a sufficiently differentiated way. Finally, some faculty have eschewed conventional grading, turning instead to ‘ungrading’ or ‘contract-based learning’ or other systems in which students earn As for completing all assigned work. There is a pedagogical case to be made for these alternate approaches, but they're fundamentally at odds with our current grading system, which relies on grades to differentiate.”

Crimson article: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/27/grading-workload-report/

I have two kids at two different ivies both in the Top 10, neither Harvard. They have high-stakes exams, complex psets, conventional grading. humanities courses require extensive reading and papers. Primary sourced research papers are the norm not the exception. Challenging complex exam problems that stretch the students ability to analyze and apply are the norm. There is more inflation than there was 25 years ago but it remains the case that most Stem classes have a median of B or B+ and most non-stem are median A-. Getting 3.8+ overall is hard, requiring intensive study, not the average(or below median, as it is at Harvard).

You just prove what the artile said. A median of B+ is serious grade inflation. Not only that, that median is just a 30/100 grade (D+) but nonetheless being curved to a B+.

[Anonymous]

kids can pick easier and harder paths at almost any schools. Directed Studies at Yale is no cakewalk. Nor is Math at Harvard, Econ at Chicago, bio at JHU, Phil a Williams, etc

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:kids can pick easier and harder paths at almost any schools. Directed Studies at Yale is no cakewalk. Nor is Math at Harvard, Econ at Chicago, bio at JHU, Phil a Williams, etc

30% Chicago is econ. Half of JHU is premed. Kids study math at Harvard? Not many. MIT is another story.

[Anonymous]

Harvard admissions doesn't pick the brightest students in the first place so of course, professors are upset. Why doesn't Harvard stop looking for woke candidates like SJW, URM, plus legacies and athletes? It's a shame how low that school is going. Who has come out of there recently?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:kids can pick easier and harder paths at almost any schools. Directed Studies at Yale is no cakewalk. Nor is Math at Harvard, Econ at Chicago, bio at JHU, Phil a Williams, etc

30% Chicago is econ. Half of JHU is premed. Kids study math at Harvard? Not many. MIT is another story.

math is a huge dept at harvard

no such thing as "premed" at JHU

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:kids can pick easier and harder paths at almost any schools. Directed Studies at Yale is no cakewalk. Nor is Math at Harvard, Econ at Chicago, bio at JHU, Phil a Williams, etc

30% Chicago is econ. Half of JHU is premed. Kids study math at Harvard? Not many. MIT is another story.

math is a huge dept at harvard

no such thing as "premed" at JHU

Completely false. Idiots like you don't know anything before speaking. Only like 10% math major. Copium too much.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Harvard admissions doesn't pick the brightest students in the first place so of course, professors are upset. Why doesn't Harvard stop looking for woke candidates like SJW, URM, plus legacies and athletes? It's a shame how low that school is going. Who has come out of there recently?

What's SJW?