<p>What is a typical GPA after 1 semester ? Posted this in Harvard 2014 column ,but no response. Just curious ,if grades continue in the high range it took to get in here!!</p>
<p>Think about it for a minute, fauxmaven. Do you <em>really</em> think that the average GPA at Harvard is going to be at the high, high levels it took to get there in the first place? That a university full of bright students who had GPA’s near 4.0 will all continue to get 4.0’s? That no one will get the B’s and the C’s?</p>
<p>No ,I don’t and that’s why I posted this question !</p>
<p>Well, Harvard has often been a poster-child for grade inflation. Lots of the faculty, especially in non-hard-science fields, buy into the idea that the students are so wonderful they should all get As. Periodically administrators say they are going to make the grading system more meaningful again, but Harvard is NOT known for anyone successfully telling faculty members what to do.</p>
<p>The average GPA there is around 3.4 - 3.5. That strikes some people as grade inflation, but bear in mind that these are folks who have rarely, if ever, gotten a B before. Harvard uses a plus / minus scale, so grades of A- and B+ would be pretty common for frosh. A s are demanding to get, B s are fairly typical, and C s are rare. Harvard doesn’t have D s.</p>
<p>"Harvard doesn’t have Ds. "</p>
<p>When did this change? In 1977 to 1981 they had D’s.</p>
<p>Too funny, Bbdad! may I assume that is from personal experience?</p>
<p>No comment. Like Natalie Portman, I never admit to anything more specific than having attended an Ivy. Not that I am like Natalie Portman, mind you. </p>
<p>I do admit to sometimes having some kinda sketchy grades. I WOULD have gotten a D on one course, but I was taking it pass fail, as a fifth course. I was lucky not to fail.</p>
<p>*Like Natalie Portman, I never admit to anything more specific than having attended an Ivy. Not that I am like Natalie Portman, mind you. *</p>
<p>[Didn’t Portman attend Harvard?](<a href=“http://www.hulu.com/watch/1404/saturday-night-live-snl-digital-short-natalie-raps”>http://www.hulu.com/watch/1404/saturday-night-live-snl-digital-short-natalie-raps</a>)</p>
<p>I don’t know about D’s at Harvard in that period, but I do know about them at Yale back then. A D was the worst grade a teacher could give. Fs didn’t appear on your transcript – you simply didn’t get credit for the course – but Ds did. As a result, unless a professor was being deliberately vindictive, if he was going to give a student a D he usually offered the student a choice between the D and an F. The only people who ever took Ds, generally, were seniors who needed to meet a graduation requirement (that didn’t require a quality grade).</p>
<p>Harvard gave Ds in the late 90s. I don’t think that has changed.</p>
<p>Most freshmen have a B or B+ average.</p>
<p>According to my friend a Harvard 2014, science and math are curved. So kids in the class are competing against each other. She always reports a test score a something like .5 above the mean or at the mean. She was a 4.0 high school student and received her first b+ first semester. That is just one example. I am sure the Harvard frosh are too busy to report grades here. But my friend and her friends feel like they 've been through a rough semester.</p>
<p>I suspect that many, many Harvard freshmen–as well as freshmen at other Ivies–receive the first B of their lifetime. Somehow, they survive.</p>
<p>I must recant my statement about D s at Harvard. I looked up the current Academic Handbook for students, and it shows the typical A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, D-, E (yes, interestingly, "F"s are called "E"s at Harvard). My daughter was the one who told me that they didn’t exist in the Harvard grading scale. I suppose it’s a good thing that she has no awareness of their existence? :)</p>
<p>One of my brothers got an A, a B, a C and a D is first term at Harvard. I got straight Bs. I got my first A the next term and ended up doing well enough to graduate *magna cum laude. *In my experience it wasn’t hard to get B’s, (even when competing with pre-meds), but you really had to work for the A’s. While D’s may exist I doubt too many students get them.</p>
<p>You should ask Princeton freshman this same question. You would get a much different answer. They have active grade deflation and I believe the average GPA is around 3.28.</p>
<p>They love to complain about it, but there is also a certain pride taken in the fact that the school is “so much harder than Harvard”.</p>
<p>There was a time when Harvard gave both E’s AND F’s.
If you took a course for a grade and failed it, that was an E.
If you took it Pass/Fail and failed it, that was an F.</p>
<p>Has Harvard abandoned the 15-point GPA scale?
Used to be A = 15, A- = 14, B+ = 12, B=11, B- = 10, C+ =8, etc.</p>
<p>There was a two-point difference between a B+ and an A-. I think a lot of people wind up with a GPA in the 13’s, which is in that two-point ditch.</p>
<p>Maybe not after first semester, though. First semester is probably a bit of an adjustment.</p>
<p>As of 2005 the average GPA at Harvard was 3.45. Possibly a bit higher now as grade inflation has continued to creep up at many private colleges. Harvard’s documented grade inflation is among the highest for any school. Perhaps some of that is because the students keep getting better and better; but let’s be honest, they’ve had strong students for a very long time now. I’d expect freshman grades to be a bit lower than the school-wide figure—as others have suggested, averaging in the B to B+ range, which no doubt comes as a shock to kids coming out of HS with 4.0 unweighted GPAs.</p>
<p>Yale, Swarthmore, Wesleyan, Amherst, Pomona, Stanford… all of these schools have higher average student GPAs. Why is Harvard always the one getting picked on for grade inflation >.<?</p>
<p>It’s because Harvard is always under a microscope due to it’s prestige (and yes, I know that was a rhetorical question).</p>