Where Data Tells the Story
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It seems as though almost every milestone has become more difficult to achieve in the last few years, from buying a house, to getting a job, to securing a place at America’s most esteemed universities.
But while a postpandemic surge in applications has meant it’s harder to get into colleges like Harvard — having reported a 3.63% admission rate for the class of 2029, marking the fourth straight year the figure has dipped below 4% — it now appears to be easier to succeed once you’re actually there.
Though the Ivy League has long wrestled with “grade inflation” (referring to the inordinate number of students at these colleges getting previously exceptional test scores), a recent 25-page report from Harvard’s Office of Undergraduate Education has outlined just how extreme this grade creep has become at the 389-year-old institution.
According to the report, more than 60% of grades that Harvard undergraduates received in the 2024-25 academic year were A’s — compared with 40% a decade ago, and almost 25% in 2005. The rise corresponds with the median grade point average at graduation hitting 3.83 for 2025, up from 3.05 in 1975, per figures from Harvard’s student newspaper and Gradeinflation.com.
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