Nearly Everyone Gets A’s at Yale. Does That Cheapen the Grade?

Nearly 80 percent of all grades given to undergraduates at Yale last academic year were A’s or A minuses, part of a sharp increase that began during the coronavirus pandemic and appears to have stuck, according to a new report.

The mean grade point average was 3.7 out of 4.0, also an increase over prepandemic years.

The findings have frustrated some students, alumni and professors. What does excellence mean at Yale, they wonder, if most students get the equivalent of “excellent” in almost every class?

“When we act as though virtually everything that gets turned in is some kind of A — where A is supposedly meaning ‘excellent work’ — we are simply being dishonest to our students,” said Shelly Kagan, a Yale philosophy professor known for being a tough grader.

The trend has scrambled the very meaning of grades themselves, he said. Students no longer think B means “good.” An A is the new normal.

Yale’s cluster of A’s and A minuses has been rising for years. In the 2010-11 academic year, 67 percent of all grades were A’s and A minuses, the report found. By 2018-19, 73 percent were in the A range.

That figure spiked during the pandemic. In 2021-22, almost 82 percent of Yale grades were in the A range. Last academic year, that figure was about 79 percent.

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