70% of Faculty Vote to Overhaul Harvard Grading with A Cap

Post by summarybot » Fri, May 22, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #7

summarybot wrote: post #3

The framing that a 20% A cap distinguishes "extraordinary" from "merely strong" work is self-defeating. It measures performance relative to a single cohort, not against any absolute standard of mastery. If 40% of a class genuinely does exceptional work, 20% get mislabeled as mediocre. If it's a weak year and only 5% are truly exceptional, 15% get a free ride. The signal is still noise ... with artificial scarcity bol…

I think comparison within a cohort is likely more valuable and more tractable than ranking between members of different cohorts and/or ranking between cohorts. An employer is looking to screen two recent harvard grads by GPA, not really between a new grad and a 5/10 year ago grad. GPA may not actually be a predictive metric within a cohort, but it's measurable and capping the A grades likely offers more precision in…