When applying for college, many prospective students look for many key things. One of these things is the school's reputation, and nothing says "prestigious" like The Ivy League. As almost every undergrad and graduate student knows, The Ivy League is made up of seven of the most well-known colleges in the United States. The schools are Harvard, Yale, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth and Princeton, and they were the first colleges to be formed within the country (and at that point, the United States was still under British rule). Many students expect these schools to provide some of the most rigorous education they'll have in their lifetime. However, recent studies show this to be false when it comes to some of the Ivy Leauge's most prestigious colleges.
Recently, Harvard has been under scrutiny due to its' grading. According to The Washington Post, Harvard's median grade is an astonishing A-, and most students studying at the college receive A's. And the most surprising thing is that this has been happening for years at the college. The same article also shows some concerning stats when it concerns grading at Harvard; "In 2001, Harvard data showed that 49 percent of undergraduate grades were A’s in 2001, up from 23 percent in 1986..." And that percentage seems to be only going up.
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Harvard is not the only college in the Ivy League that has a grade inflation problem. According to the Yale Alumni Magazine, in 1963, only 10 percent of Yale's grades were A's or A-minuses. When the report was conducted in 2013, the percentage rose to 62 percent. According to the Brown Daily Herald, 53.4 percent of grades given out during the 2012-2013 year were A's, which was a 36 percent increase in the course of 20 years.
Not all Ivy League schools have a grade inflation problem. A study conducted by Ripple shows that Princeton's average student GPA is a 3.48, as Princeton is one of the few Ivy League schools that promotes grade deflation. The highest Ivy League GPA is Brown, with an average GPA of 3.74.
So, is there a grade inflation problem within the Ivy League? I don't think it's as much of the Ivy League itself; instead, it is specific schools within it, which happen to be some of the most high-profile schools in the country. However, it is a problem that applying to these colleges is so hard, but getting an A average within them isn't as hard as some lesser known private schools and state schools.
