Harvard University faculty have voted to give out fewer A’s in a bid to combat grade inflation.
Recruiters and hiring managers are relieved — and hoping it will help distinguish the best candidates from the rest of them.
“If everybody is scoring 100%, is anybody really scoring 100%? It’s about schools needing to provide more of a distinction between students who actually are performing really well versus those who are just getting by,” Steven Rothberg, founder of College Recruiter, told The Post.
Namaan Mian, COO of consulting recruiting firm Management Consulted, says his experience sifting through hundreds of highly qualified resumes has shown him just how much grade inflation has made Grade Point Averages irrelevant. A grade point average of 3.8 to 4.0 is equivalent to an A.
“When I hire, if 100 people apply for a role at my company and they all have [a GPA of] 4.0, I just know from personal experience that not all of them are going to be the same level of performer [so] that’s a meaningless data point now.”
He says a cap on the top grades will make them useful again: “Now, as an employer, [GPAs can] give me a more meaningful signal on my talent pipeline.”
A 2025 report from the Harvard Office of Undergraduate Education found that 60% of grades given out are A’s — a massive jump from 40% just ten years ago and less than a quarter two decades ago.
Grade inflation had got so out of control an “A” meant little. Harvard have now voted in a new policy capping A’s at 20% in any given class.
“I’m actually really glad that they’re doing it,” Jerry Lee, founder of the job search website Wonsolting, told The Post.
Though schools like NYU’s Stern School of Business have similar policies, Harvard students have whined that capping GPAs will make the cut-throat school even more stressful, or harm their hiring prospects compared to peers at other schools.
Suzanne Lucas, founder of Improve Your HR, who has been in the HR industry for 27 years, says they should cool it.
“It’s emotionally difficult for kids in top schools, because they are used to getting straight A’s, but that’s not how the real world works,” she said. “If you’re applying for a job with a Harvard degree and a 3.0 GPA, you’re still going to outrank the local state school applicant with a 4.0.”
Lucas predicted that other schools are going to follow suit, because Harvard is a leader in the world of academia. But Jeff Hyman, CEO of Recruit Rockstars, is more suspicious that pressure from students and parents will make the proliferation of these policies less feasible.
“Universities are graded by customer satisfaction, which is the student and the parent paying a hundred grand a year,” he told The Post. “And customers don’t like to pay money and be told that they’re average.”
The hiring experts universally agreed that GPAs have become both a less popular and a less meaningful metric in hiring.
“It used to be one of the most important criteria for almost every employer hiring any student or recent grad, and now it has become one of the least important criteria,” Rothberg, who has 35 years of experience in the field, said. “It’s gone from being almost top of the list to almost bottom of the list.”
Hyman agreed, adding that GPA is statistically “a very poor predictor” of job performance. “Book smarts are not the same as problem solving or the ability to work with others,” he said, estimating half as many of his clients prioritize GPA, compared with just five or ten years ago.
A 2026 report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers found that 42% of employers were using GPA for screening purposes — down from 73% in just 2019.
But some hiring experts are holding out hope that, even if GPA is a bunk measure of success and potential today, new anti-grade inflation policies will help make it meaningful once again.
“GPA is never going to go back to the gold standard metric,” Mian said. “But at least now people will know that a 3.7 at Harvard is a well-earned 3.7, whereas we have no idea what a 4.0 at Penn really means.”
