There’s an old saying that seems particularly relevant in our current moment: “It’s really hard to get into the Ivy League, and really easy to graduate from it!” The reason being? Grade inflation! Back in 2014, Ivy Coach reported that the average GPA among students attending schools across the Ivy League had risen from between a 2.3 and 2.8 in the 1950s and 1960s to between a 3.3 and 3.7 in the early 2010s. Ten years later, grade inflation has continued at a remarkable pace across the eight Ivies. Let’s unpack the extent of Ivy League grade inflation in 2024, the reasons underlying the phenomenon, and what the future holds.

Ivy League Students are Earning More A’s Than Ever!

The average GPA across the Ivy League just keeps ascending higher and higher. According to a report by The Daily Princetonian, “The average GPA [at Princeton University] for the 2022–2023 academic year was 3.56 out of 4.00, an increase from the 2018–2019 average of 3.46.” A steep spike to be sure, but it pales in comparison to Harvard’s 3.80 average in the 2020-21 academic year, or Yale’s 3.70 in the 2022-23 academic year. Similar trends in grade inflation have been recorded across the Ivy League. The Brown Daily Herald, for example, reported that “in the 2020-21 academic year [at Brown University], 67% of grades were As — up from 39% in 1993.”

Some have likened Ivy League grade inflation to price inflation in the economy. The glaring issue with this comparison is that prices can continue to increase ad infinitum, whereas grade inflation will eventually reach a ceiling set by the 4.0 scale. Grades cannot continue to rise without the metric itself becoming entirely meaningless. Experts have already begun to reevaluate the meaning of strong academic performance from Ivy League alumni, with Town and Country magazine reporting that some hiring consultants for Fortune 500 companies have begun to translate anything below an A- from an Ivy League transcript as a “defacto” fail.

Which Ivy Leagues Have the Highest Grade Inflation?

While not every Ivy League school has average GPA data available, below is a breakdown of the data that is publicly available:

1. Brown University: Anecdotal reporting suggests that Brown students have the highest GPAs in the Ivy League, with As being 67% of grades awarded during the 2020-21 academic year
2. Harvard University: 3.8 Average GPA
3. Yale University: 3.7 Average GPA
4. Princeton University: 3.56 Average GPA
5. Dartmouth College: 3.52 Average GPA
6. Columbia University: Not Available
7. Cornell University:Not Available
8. University of Pennsylvania: Not Available

Why Have Grades Inflated So Much Across the Ivy League?

Back when the Ivy League was exclusively composed of essentially rich knuckleheads, Cs and Bs were the name of the game. No surprises there. By the 1970s, meritocratic admissions criteria drove up the academic rigor of each incoming Ivy League cohort. It’s natural that grade inflation would result from these increasing standards. Some could argue that professors giving out more As is a simple parallel of downward trends in acceptance rates and ever heightening academic rigor. The students who get into the Ivy League today have higher test scores, better time management skills, and more extensive extracurricular commitments than their predecessors. It follows that, faced with the same level of academic difficulty, current Ivy League students would outperform those that came before them.

The real controversy lies in the possibility that academic standards across the Ivy League have become more lenient over time. If employers can no longer use a student’s GPA as a gauge of their professional potential, these schools have failed to do their jobs properly. Worse still, if schools within the Ivy League inconsistently grade students, certain alumni will be at a disadvantage relative to others, even if they have the same capabilities. That’s exactly what happened at Princeton, which implemented a short-lived grade deflation policy in 2005. Princeton alums were passed over for jobs that went to their counterparts at Yale and Harvard, student backlash ensued, and the policy was revoked in 2014.

The Future of Ivy League Grade Inflation

Consistency is key when it comes to addressing the grade inflation epidemic across the Ivy League. Overcorrect too much with a deflationary policy, and jeopardize the employability of alumni. Continue to do nothing and the GPA metric will be rendered even further into straight-A absurdity. No matter which direction the Ivy League takes, uniformity will be crucial. But there is precedent for a whole new academic system. Some of the nation’s top boarding and prep schools have begun to move away from GPA calculation altogether. It will take some time for such a radical shift to happen within the Ivy League, a.k.a. the tone-setters of American higher education, but a whole new system of academic evaluation could certainly be on the horizon!