60 Percent of Grades at Harvard Were A's. Enough Is Enough(nytimes.com)
nytimes.com
60 Percent of Grades at Harvard Were A's. Enough Is Enough
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/21/opinion/harvard-easy-a-grades.html
6 comments
Maybe this is obvious, but more selective admissions = smarter students= higher grades? if everyone is taking AP/enrichment courses and at the top of their class in high school, higher grades should not be surprise.
Right, but is there no room for discrimination near the top?
If 60% of people are getting a "full A" are they all truly equally capable? Clearly not, right?
Especially for less structured things like essays. Imagine reading your friends paper and finding issues with it that are left wholly unaddressed and then finding out they got an A just like you.
Consider AP. Sure, everyone taking an AP test is more academically engaged than those who don't, but why would that ever indicate that 60% of AP testers get 5s? In fact, looking at last years results, most tests seem to have populations centered around 3, with only a few (or maybe just the CompSci one) having populations where 5 is the most common.
The whole scale's wonky anyway. My sister worked extremely hard to be first in her class, and I made almost no effort to drop out and get my GED before my class graduated because my state didn't allow early graduation. We both know which of us is more intelligent and which is the harder worker, but our grades don't tell the story.
If 60% of people are getting a "full A" are they all truly equally capable? Clearly not, right?
Especially for less structured things like essays. Imagine reading your friends paper and finding issues with it that are left wholly unaddressed and then finding out they got an A just like you.
Consider AP. Sure, everyone taking an AP test is more academically engaged than those who don't, but why would that ever indicate that 60% of AP testers get 5s? In fact, looking at last years results, most tests seem to have populations centered around 3, with only a few (or maybe just the CompSci one) having populations where 5 is the most common.
The whole scale's wonky anyway. My sister worked extremely hard to be first in her class, and I made almost no effort to drop out and get my GED before my class graduated because my state didn't allow early graduation. We both know which of us is more intelligent and which is the harder worker, but our grades don't tell the story.
This sounds like a logically correct assumption.
Does Harvard not take this into account and adjust their courses to actually be of a rigor that challenges students?
Does Harvard not take this into account and adjust their courses to actually be of a rigor that challenges students?
Since HN trims leading numbers: 60 Percent of grades at Harvard were As.
> "we gave full A’s to over 4,000 students, or more than 49 percent of the people we taught [...] they hadn’t all crossed the threshold of “extraordinary distinction” that the student handbook says a full A is supposed to represent" (Furman and Laibson).
Perhaps we should look into why they received A without actually actually crossing the required threshold, rather than imposing arbitrary percentage limits. From the other side, if they do all demonstrate "extraordinary distinction", why should 29% of them suffer and not receive an A? I don't think the problem here is the number of students receiving A's, but instead what an A actually means.
Perhaps we should look into why they received A without actually actually crossing the required threshold, rather than imposing arbitrary percentage limits. From the other side, if they do all demonstrate "extraordinary distinction", why should 29% of them suffer and not receive an A? I don't think the problem here is the number of students receiving A's, but instead what an A actually means.
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