IN THE NEWS: Almost 80% of grades issued at Yale are A’s

A new report reveals that almost 80% of grades issued at the elite Yale University last year were A’s or A-minuses. The mean GPA was 3.7%.

The report, conducted by a Yale economics professor Ray C. Fair and published in The New York Times, showed that about 79% of grades given to Yale students during the 2022-2023 academic year were either A’s or A-minuses, a figure that is actually lower than in the academic years overshadowed by COVID-19. 

During the 2020–21 academic year, 82% of grades fell into this category. The following year, the share was 80%. The study did not include the 2019-2020 academic year, as most of those classes were offered as pass/fail options in light of the response to the COVID-19 outbreak. 

In 2010-2011, only 67% of grades issued fell into this category. 

“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,” Yale philosophy professor Shelly Kagan told The New York Times.