Harvard Will Cap A Grades

The Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Tuesday wrapped up a vote to cap the number of A grades at 20 percent per course, plus or minus four A’s. The policy proposal, which faculty have deliberated over for months, passed in a 458-to-201 vote and will take effect in fall 2027. 

The new cap will be “broadly advertised, including interpretive text on transcripts,” according to the policy. In addition to the A-grade cap, the faculty also passed a policy to use average percentile rank—students’ relative academic performance compared to their peers—rather than GPA to determine who should receive internal honors, prizes and awards like the Sophia Freund Prize. A student’s average percentile rank will not appear on their transcript.

The final proposal up for vote failed. Faculty were asked whether the new policy should allow faculty to petition the Office of Undergraduate Education to opt out of the A-grade limit for certain courses and use satisfactory/unsatisfactory grading designations instead.

“I’m incredibly grateful to the members of the grading subcommittee for their extraordinary work. For nearly a year, they dug deeply into a complex and thorny issue—grappling with a problem that many people have recognized, but no one has solved,” Amanda Claybaugh, dean of undergraduate education, said in an emailed statement Wednesday. “This is a consequential vote. It will, I believe, strengthen the academic culture of Harvard; it will also, I hope, encourage other institutions to confront similar questions with the same level of rigor and courage.”

The four faculty members on the grading subcommittee that developed the proposal—computer science professor Stuart Shieber, government professor Alisha Holland, psychology and civil discourse professor Joshua Greene, and African American studies professor Paulina Alberto—also put out a statement Wednesday.

“This [vote] matters for our students above all. A Harvard A grade will now tell them, as well as employers and graduate schools, something real about what a student has achieved. An A will once again be what Harvard’s guidelines have long said it is: a mark of extraordinary distinction. And an A- need no longer be a source of anxiety, encouraging students to explore new subjects and take intellectual risks,” they wrote.

After three years, the Office of Undergraduate Education will present a review of the A-grade cap to the faculty, though these first years should not be considered a pilot phase, spokesperson James Chisholm said in an email.