I read something quite interesting in The Harvard Crimson this week. The university is still being criticized for their grade inflation and students are concerned about how that will affect their GPA. The author of the article (who is serving as the mouthpiece for the Crimson staff) obviously disagrees with any changes to the grading policy and writes, “At Ivy League schools, it is hard to quantify excellence as a relative measure because so many of us are legitimately ‘excellent.'” I agree that professors shouldn’t be limited to the amount of A’s they award. However, the problem may be that the standards of the professors aren’t rigorous enough. Does anyone really want to graduate with a class where 91% (in 2001) are awarded Latin honors (summa, magna and cum laude) Your degree may be from Harvard, but do you stand out from the crowd? Maybe the problem isn’t the establishment of a new system but what is expected of the students.
Plus they just recently changed their requirements for Latin honors. Until last year, to graduate cum laude you had to have a 2.83 GPA (now you need a 3.33). At my undergraduate institution you had to earn a 3.4 GPA to be awarded cum laude. My class of around 220 graduated 35 people with Latin honors (almost 16%) and less than 1% of other graduates (including myself) earned departmental honors (a 3.5 GPA in their major courses and honors on their thesis or comprehensive exams). While Washington College is certainly not Harvard, I feel that my degree is a real accomplishment when compared to that of others--Ivy League or not.
I will add that I have no experience as an undergraduate at Harvard, nor do I have any friends who completed their degree there. I guess that’s because my college friends (a majority whom graduated with honors) aren't that "excellent."
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