Anonymous
10/28/2025 15:13
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:I teach STEM at one of the notoriously hard universities mentioned in this thread, and I can confidently say that Harvard's struggles with underprepared students are not only Harvard's struggles. Rather, this has affected all universities and all of my colleagues universally feel the struggle. As a result, we have had to redesign our courses, and we have become more lenient, whether that is a philosophy we want to adopt or not. Mostly, we feel it is our responsibility to help students succeed as best we can, and if that means changing previously difficult content to make it more manageable to the majority of the class, that is what we have to do.
And before the people of DCUM jump to the conclusion that this watering down is all due to DEI, or URM, or FGLI, I have faced similar struggles with students who are advantaged in every way and who come in with glowing grades, awards, and national merit recognitions, etc. I honestly believe that some factor has hurt attention spans almost universally among our young people. As the parent of a high schooler, what I observe among my college students has influenced the way I parent, and I am really invested in reducing distractions, and encouraging my teen to take on challenges that involve deep work and which do not guarantee success.
Yes this is not a H specific issue.
Today’s kids have smart phones and AIs. They don’t read as the past generations do.
Grades have increased over the past decades everywhere.
Yes today’s students are more competitive and hard working than their parents. And more international students contributed to the rising quality of students. So, grades are higher even without the inflation.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 15:08
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:What are the tangible, long term negative affects of more kids getting As? Are these kids unable to find jobs? Are they unable to perform at work if they do find jobs?
Employers and graduate schools will be forced to look to other measures to make distinctions between students — internships, etc. Wealthier students will have an advantage in obtaining those, and Harvard will have thrown away its academic reputation for nothing.
So... positive things?
Is it positive that my kid has a leg up because I have the connections to get him impressive internships?
I was talking to the Dean of a t-14 law school, and I mentioned how impressive the students are, especially with regard to their non-academic activities. I noted that it is unlikely that I would be admitted today. He said “All the alumni say that, but it’s not true. Students do these things today because it is expected. It wasn’t expected in your day. If it was, you would have done it.” That’s probably correct, at least for the those that had a support system that makes all those other things possible for the vast majority of students.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 15:06
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:According to my daughter, what we call grade inflation in HS is just rampant cheating.
+1
Kids are cheating their way through high school, applying TO because they have lousy SAT scores and then struggling in college.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 14:59
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:What are the tangible, long term negative affects of more kids getting As? Are these kids unable to find jobs? Are they unable to perform at work if they do find jobs?
Dumbing down is not good.
But what are the alternatives?
Stricter grading leads to more dropouts and more suicides.
Stricter grading also makes it harder for students to get internships and jobs, and harder for them to get into law school and med school.
Nobody likes grade inflation but nobody likes suicide, drop outs, or unemployed/underemployed alums, either.
Number of jobs and seats at law school and med school stay the same, and they will be filled with qualified students.
Under qualified students should not be admitted in the first place and should get out if not at the right place.
That's better for the whole country in the long run.
Harvard changing its policy will have no effect on the whole country in the long run. Under-qualified students from other schools that continue to practice grade inflation will step up to take those law school and med school seats.
No because they need to get a good score in LSAT or MCAT. Under qualified will be weeded out, whether from Harvard or somewhere else.
In the meantime, they’ve made the LSAT easier. Law schools are very frustrated about how difficult it is to distinguish between students these days, and it’s even more frustrating for excellent students who have very few ways to distinguish themselves.
Then maybe the need a real admissions formula that actually considers rigor. Sorry but the current law school admissions process where they consider someone in a laughably easy sociology major above other applicants with much harder courses is beyond broken. They could discern between candidates if they chose to not be lazy.
It’s cute that you think the schools are just “lazy.” They’ve put a lot of time and effort into valuing things other than academics — it would be easier to simply have a rubric that calculates rigor. But the problem is for even the law schools that do want to identify the very best students is that the system below them is so broken that there is no way to identify which courses have more “rigor,” because grades are meaningless, even in the hard sciences. The STEM people seem to think their subjects are exempt from grade inflation, and they’re not. Cue the people in IT or engineering who find that recent graduates may have taken courses but they seem to retain little or nothing of the actual content.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 14:36
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:What are the tangible, long term negative affects of more kids getting As? Are these kids unable to find jobs? Are they unable to perform at work if they do find jobs?
Dumbing down is not good.
But what are the alternatives?
Stricter grading leads to more dropouts and more suicides.
Stricter grading also makes it harder for students to get internships and jobs, and harder for them to get into law school and med school.
Nobody likes grade inflation but nobody likes suicide, drop outs, or unemployed/underemployed alums, either.
Number of jobs and seats at law school and med school stay the same, and they will be filled with qualified students.
Under qualified students should not be admitted in the first place and should get out if not at the right place.
That's better for the whole country in the long run.
Harvard changing its policy will have no effect on the whole country in the long run. Under-qualified students from other schools that continue to practice grade inflation will step up to take those law school and med school seats.
No because they need to get a good score in LSAT or MCAT. Under qualified will be weeded out, whether from Harvard or somewhere else.
In the meantime, they’ve made the LSAT easier. Law schools are very frustrated about how difficult it is to distinguish between students these days, and it’s even more frustrating for excellent students who have very few ways to distinguish themselves.
Then maybe the need a real admissions formula that actually considers rigor. Sorry but the current law school admissions process where they consider someone in a laughably easy sociology major above other applicants with much harder courses is beyond broken. They could discern between candidates if they chose to not be lazy.
+1
Bring back the old LSAT at the very least.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 14:33
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Harvard has a 3 percent admissions rate and just 1650 freshman . My kid is there now - National merit scholarship winner, 11 APs (including the hard ones like Calc BC, Physics. chem, lit. apush , foreign language) - with 5s on all if them. Many national awards in academic areas.
Currently working their butt off at Harvard . Not unprepared and not getting east As. If there are a lot of kids getting As, it’s because they are super hardworking
This only says your DC is slow.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 14:31
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:What are the tangible, long term negative affects of more kids getting As? Are these kids unable to find jobs? Are they unable to perform at work if they do find jobs?
Dumbing down is not good.
But what are the alternatives?
Stricter grading leads to more dropouts and more suicides.
Stricter grading also makes it harder for students to get internships and jobs, and harder for them to get into law school and med school.
Nobody likes grade inflation but nobody likes suicide, drop outs, or unemployed/underemployed alums, either.
Number of jobs and seats at law school and med school stay the same, and they will be filled with qualified students.
Under qualified students should not be admitted in the first place and should get out if not at the right place.
That's better for the whole country in the long run.
Harvard changing its policy will have no effect on the whole country in the long run. Under-qualified students from other schools that continue to practice grade inflation will step up to take those law school and med school seats.
No because they need to get a good score in LSAT or MCAT. Under qualified will be weeded out, whether from Harvard or somewhere else.
In the meantime, they’ve made the LSAT easier. Law schools are very frustrated about how difficult it is to distinguish between students these days, and it’s even more frustrating for excellent students who have very few ways to distinguish themselves.
Then maybe the need a real admissions formula that actually considers rigor. Sorry but the current law school admissions process where they consider someone in a laughably easy sociology major above other applicants with much harder courses is beyond broken. They could discern between candidates if they chose to not be lazy.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 14:15
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:What are the tangible, long term negative affects of more kids getting As? Are these kids unable to find jobs? Are they unable to perform at work if they do find jobs?
Dumbing down is not good.
But what are the alternatives?
Stricter grading leads to more dropouts and more suicides.
Stricter grading also makes it harder for students to get internships and jobs, and harder for them to get into law school and med school.
Nobody likes grade inflation but nobody likes suicide, drop outs, or unemployed/underemployed alums, either.
Number of jobs and seats at law school and med school stay the same, and they will be filled with qualified students.
Under qualified students should not be admitted in the first place and should get out if not at the right place.
That's better for the whole country in the long run.
Harvard changing its policy will have no effect on the whole country in the long run. Under-qualified students from other schools that continue to practice grade inflation will step up to take those law school and med school seats.
No because they need to get a good score in LSAT or MCAT. Under qualified will be weeded out, whether from Harvard or somewhere else.
In the meantime, they’ve made the LSAT easier. Law schools are very frustrated about how difficult it is to distinguish between students these days, and it’s even more frustrating for excellent students who have very few ways to distinguish themselves.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 14:11
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Harvard has a 3 percent admissions rate and just 1650 freshman . My kid is there now - National merit scholarship winner, 11 APs (including the hard ones like Calc BC, Physics. chem, lit. apush , foreign language) - with 5s on all if them. Many national awards in academic areas.
Currently working their butt off at Harvard . Not unprepared and not getting east As. If there are a lot of kids getting As, it’s because they are super hardworking
“Hardworking” isn’t the measure. The study found that students are having to work hard because they’re less prepared than students used to be (despite inflated HS grades and test scores). The study found that the number of hours worked by students didn’t drop much, but Professors say the students can’t do as much reading as they used to, etc. Meanwhile, the average GPA has gone up dramatically.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 13:58
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Harvard driving itself off a cliff. Needs to get it together.
Result of DEI and wokeness.
Totally. I'd bet money many of these struggling kids were diversity admits.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 13:57
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:What are the tangible, long term negative affects of more kids getting As? Are these kids unable to find jobs? Are they unable to perform at work if they do find jobs?
Employers and graduate schools will be forced to look to other measures to make distinctions between students — internships, etc. Wealthier students will have an advantage in obtaining those, and Harvard will have thrown away its academic reputation for nothing.
So... positive things?
Anonymous
10/28/2025 13:57
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:Let's face it. Students don't go to HYP because the education is any different than other good schools. They go there because of connections and name recognition, although even these reasons are decreasing in importance.
What an idiot. HYP produced so many Nobel laureates in the past thanks to their education.
None of that is due to their undergraduate education....think grad schools and research.
Anonymous
10/28/2025 13:55
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote:If Harvard really cared they’d focus more on academic strength in admissions instead of recruiting fencers and kids who started their own non-profits. Also I hate how they always imply that the lowered standards are from the poor kids and not wealthy athletes who are likely very bright but do have lower average scores.
But I don’t think Harvard cares - I think they like it just the way it is. If they wanted to change this they could force a grading curve with one memo.
Harvard doesn't care, they have never cared because they have never been about peak academics at the undergraduate level. People on this thread are constantly tryin g to make them into something that they have no interest in being. They have always been about a high academic baseline plus other characteristics.
Completely false. What an idiot.
Are you high or just stupid?
They come right out and say it. They decline a majority of top SAT scores, they openly state that they could fill their classes multiple times over with zero impact on the quality of their class. The SFFA lawsuit broke down how their rubric works. A perfect SAT score gets you a '2', but a 1520 or so along with a high GPA and rigor will also get you a '2' and then they move on. Getting a '1' is truly amazing but it still means about a 66% chance that you get in. They have a baseline that they desire but beyond the baseline they move to other factors.
A kid needs 3 scores of '2' to have a better than 50% chance of getting in. Peak academics gets you one.
What more do you need to hear before you get it?
Anonymous
10/28/2025 13:54
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:I think it's fair to say that the average Harvard student is smarter than the average student.
And I think it's fair to say that Organic Chemistry or Econ 101 etc are classes that should be covering the same material more or less no matter the university you are in.
So it makes sense to me that way more Harvard students are getting As in that class than average. I think most Harvard kids should be getting As to be honest.
Now this idea that kids are coming into Harvard unprepared is just a slam on their admissions office full stop. that's a failure.
The average GPA at Harvard has risen dramatically in the last 20 years. Are you arguing that today’s Harvard students are that much smarter than they were 20 years ago?
Anonymous
10/28/2025 13:51
Subject: Harvard Report on Impacts of Grade Inflation
Anonymous wrote:What are the tangible, long term negative affects of more kids getting As? Are these kids unable to find jobs? Are they unable to perform at work if they do find jobs?
Employers and graduate schools will be forced to look to other measures to make distinctions between students — internships, etc. Wealthier students will have an advantage in obtaining those, and Harvard will have thrown away its academic reputation for nothing.