Harvard Crimson -Student Reaction to Grade Inflation Report

[Anonymous]

I thought this was a parody, at first.

Lord help the people who hire these snowflakes for a real job.

Kudos, I guess, to the student that said the quiet part out loud — the deal is supposed to be that you work hard to get into Harvard and then coast.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/10/30/students-react-grading-report/

“The whole entire day, I was crying,” she said. “I skipped classes on Monday, and I was just sobbing in bed because I felt like I try so hard in my classes, and my grades aren’t even the best.”

“It just felt soul-crushing,” she added.

***

Kayta A. Aronson ’29 said stricter standards could take a serious toll on students’ mental health.

“It makes me rethink my decision to come to the school,” she said. “I killed myself all throughout high school to try and get into this school. I was looking forward to being fulfilled by my studies now, rather than being killed by them.”

Zahra Rohaninejad ’29 added that grading already felt harsh and raising standards further would only erode students’ ability to enjoy their classes.

“I can’t reach my maximum level of enjoyment just learning the material because I’m so anxious about the midterm, so anxious about the papers, and because I know it’s so harshly graded,” she said. “If that standard is raised even more, it’s unrealistic to assume that people will enjoy their classes.”

[Anonymous]

Lots of Harvard kids ( HNW legacy / donor excepted , they have a different dynamic and may float due to inherent financial strength) may have peaked too early and market may start looking at Harvard differently

[Anonymous]

Harvard is easy so these students weren't prepared or got in TO.

[Anonymous]

Remember the Crimson is a student paper, so drama abounds.

[Anonymous]

This is not the fault of the faculty who are frustrated, or the students who can't cope with rigor. If they were admitted, it's been taken for granted that they have what it takes to succeed with rigorous classes. If a large number of admitted students are trying but can't cope, it is a problem with the admissions process, and admissions officers need to learn to do better to admit students who are academically prepared for a rigorous college education.

[Anonymous]

you know they are not going to change their admissions process. The changes
in their student body just increases the pressure on the professors to reduce the rigor and academic standards of their courses. I graduated from Harvard over 25 years ago from a STEM field. Believe me, even back then, it wasn’t that hard, so can’t imagine what it is now if the professors are complaining. Besides, high school grade inflation and standardized testing policies (superscoring and the tests just becoming easier) makes it difficult to differentiate amongst the students at the right hand side of the bell curve. There is compression at the top which makes difficult to tell who really is able to handle rigorous academics.

[Anonymous]

About a quarter of students at Harvard are prepared for the rigor. They are not admitting kids who are academically prepared.

[Anonymous]

they don’t place as much weight on being academically prepared as they used to. the current social engineering crusade is more focused on choosing diamonds in the rough. maybe a generation ago, they would go deeper into the ranks at a top feeder hs, knowing these kids made it through a tough HS curriculum,
but now, preference is given to say a valedictorian at a podunk rural HS with SAT of 1300/school average 900, versus like a top 15% at a place like TJ or Stuyvesant and SAT 1550+, because they think it’s less “impressive”. Whereas I’d say the TJ kid likely had a much much harder high school experience, and is still being judged by higher
standards.

[Anonymous]

Ivies care a lot more about visuals than substance. Between the two, they would pick a kid with 4.0 GPA with much less rigor than a high rigor kid with a lower GPA. I think many kids enrolled at ivies realize that they are not prepared for the rigor.

[Anonymous]

These are ridiculous replies. I have a kid at a T10 that has largely resisted the grade inflation, and I read this article. How I interpreted the kids' reactions was that they were stressed because they felt they needed to be perfect and would no longer get perfect grades. It took our kid a year to adjust to the fact that they weren't going to have a perfect GPA but it was all for the good. These kids think their lives will end if they aren't perfect, but really that will allow them to live more healthy lives. I don't think these are under-prepared kids. Quite the opposite, but they haven't let go of the unrealistic expectations we put on kids.

[Anonymous]

What's going on with the bashing of Harvard on here? Is it just a few folks?

The people being interviewed sounds sad.

This was not our experience with the hard working kids we know at Harvard.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:About a quarter of students at Harvard are prepared for the rigor. They are not admitting kids who are academically prepared.

Is that why your kids won’t be accepted? The problem is this age group. They normalized non-gender, safe space, they are dramatic and almost everything causes them anxiety. They are open about their mental health issues and discuss them loudly. This is a generalization but not uncommon.

Don’t worry about Harvard students. They’ll be fine.

[Anonymous]

if there were less grade inflation across the board, students would have less pressure and feel that they needed to maintain perfect grades. It’s a paradoxical effect where by making high school
and college easier, well meaning administrators have actually made things more stressful. The Atlantic actually had an article about this not too long ago.

[Anonymous]

Reading this piece. They came off really entitled yet very weak. Is this where our next generation of elites woudl come from.

[Anonymous]

I am a Harvard graduate and I wish this stupid institution would just sink into the sea.

There’s too much drama, interest, and emotional energy around it now. Harvard’s continued existence as the cynosure of elite meritocracy is bad for the students, bad for the professors, bad for education in general, and bad for America.

Just shut the damn place down and force the strivers to focus their neuroses somewhere else!