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In my opinion, the admissions race at the Ivies is so tough now that the vast majority of students there have these traits, too. Harvard takes kids with top grades and scores who are also top achievers in other areas, usually multiple other areas. That’s why I don’t think grade inflation at Harvard is a big deal. If grades are designed to measure master of the material, as opposed to sorting students into performance tiers, then I suspect that the high percentage of high grades at Harvard is quite appropriate. That’s part of the problem here–trying to generalize from Harvard and the limited number of schools with a similar student body is not very helpful in trying to address problems with the educational system overall.</p>