Harvard Moves to Cap A Grades at 20%

At Harvard, the typical student does not just earn passing grades — they earn A's. In the 2024–2025 academic year, 66 percent of Harvard undergraduates received A's in their courses. When A-minuses are included, 84 percent of all grades fell in the top tier.¹

Those numbers are what prompted a faculty committee to propose the most significant grading overhaul in the university's recent history — and what drove more than 200 faculty members to pack a Science Center meeting on April 8, 2026 to debate it.

What the Proposal Says

The committee recommended a hard cap: no more than 20 percent of students in any course can receive an A or A-plus. For courses with small enrollments, the rule includes a flexibility buffer — instructors can award up to four additional A grades per class. That means a 10-person seminar could give up to six A's, while a 150-student lecture could award up to 34.¹

A-minus grades are not capped under the current proposal.

The plan also introduces what the committee calls an "average percentile rank" — an internal metric used to determine honors and academic awards. The percentile rank would not appear on transcripts, would not be visible to other students, and would not be shared with employers or graduate schools.¹

Courses that opt out of the grade-cap system would shift to a three-tier grading scale: satisfactory-plus, satisfactory, or unsatisfactory.

66%

What Students Think

The student response has been strongly negative. A survey by the Harvard Undergraduate Association found that nearly 85 percent of undergraduates oppose the proposed cap on A grades.²

Student critics argue that the cap penalizes academic effort in competitive classes, creates incentives for course-shopping to find easier paths to As, and could create confusion among law schools, medical schools, and employers who do not know the grading system changed.

Faculty are not unanimous either. Supporters argue that a grade system where 84 percent of students earn top marks offers essentially no signal about academic performance. Critics within the faculty question whether a rigid percentage cap is the right mechanism, and whether it could disadvantage students in fields where grading is naturally more concentrated at the top.

If you are applying to graduate school in fall 2026 or later from Harvard, keep in mind that the cap has not passed yet and would not take effect until fall 2027 at the earliest. Your transcript will look the same. But if the system does change, graduate admissions offices will receive guidance — the internal percentile rank is designed precisely for this kind of external use.

Why the Vote Was Delayed

The April 8 faculty meeting was supposed to be the last step before an email vote. Instead, faculty comments ran over the allotted time, and the vote was tabled until May — the final faculty meeting of the 2025–2026 academic year.¹

If the faculty vote yes in May, implementation would begin fall 2027, one year later than originally planned after amendments changed the timeline. If the vote fails or is tabled again, the proposal would need to restart next academic year.

Why This Matters Beyond Harvard

Grade inflation is not a Harvard-specific issue. Studies across higher education have shown a decades-long upward drift in grades at selective colleges, which makes it genuinely harder for graduate schools and employers to distinguish performance levels.

Harvard's prominence means any policy it adopts gets scrutiny across higher education. If the grade cap passes and is seen as working, other elite universities may consider similar measures. If it backfires — if students strategically avoid hard courses to preserve their GPA, for example — that outcome will also shape the conversation.

If you attend another highly selective college and your admissions materials compare your performance against Harvard applicants, understand that Harvard's grading scale, if changed, could affect how your transcripts look by comparison. For now, nothing has changed — but watch May's faculty vote.

What Students Should Know

If you are at Harvard right now, nothing changes until fall 2027 at the earliest, and only if the faculty approve the measure. Your current courses and grades are unaffected.

If you are applying to Harvard or weighing selective schools, grade caps are one signal in a broader trend of admissions and academic policy reform that reflects how selective colleges are thinking about rigor.

For any college student, the more important point is this: what counts as a good GPA depends entirely on context — your school, your major, and what you plan to do next. A 3.5 at a school with genuine grade variation is not the same signal as a 3.9 at a school where 84 percent of students get top marks.

If you are thinking about how to get into graduate school, your undergraduate GPA is one piece of a much larger picture. Research, recommendations, and test scores carry weight that a fraction of a GPA point rarely does.

Whether Harvard's proposal passes or fails, its core observation is accurate: grades that no longer distinguish student performance stop being useful information. That is a problem worth solving — the debate is just over how.

Footnotes

1. The Harvard Crimson. (2026, April 8). Faculty Postpone Grading Proposal Vote to May to Allow for Extended Discussion. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/4/8/grading-proposal-vote-delayed/ ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. The Harvard Crimson. (2026, February 9). Nearly 85% of Harvard Undergraduates Oppose Proposed Cap on A Grades, HUA Survey Finds. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2026/2/9/hua-grading-proposal-survey/ ↩