Undergraduates React to Revisions to Harvard College’s Proposal and Postponement of the “20% +4” A-Grading Cap
Graphic by Angie Li
On Monday, March 30, in an email to Harvard faculty, Dean of Undergraduate Education Amanda Claybaugh announced changes to the grading policy proposal she shared in February. The amendments included factoring in students taking a class pass/fail when calculating the 20% +4 grading cap, adding SAT+ to the existing SAT/UNSAT scale, and waiting to implement the policy until the fall of 2027. Faculty members will consider the new proposal at their April Faculty of Arts and Sciences meeting to vote on these modifications.
“In the course of these discussions, faculty and students raised questions around how to calculate the number of students in a course, dissatisfaction with the existing SAT/UNSAT system, and concerns that the Registrar would need sufficient time for implementation,” Claybaugh wrote in the email. “A consensus emerged in support of three changes.”
According to Claybaugh, these adjustments were made after considering feedback from the community. She cited the Faculty Council, the March FAS Faculty meeting, town halls, newspaper articles, and other discussions with faculty and students as outlets through which community members expressed their thoughts on the proposal.
In the email, Claybaugh urged faculty to read the updated proposal, as well as the Proposal for Updating Grading Policies, the initial policy suggestion seeking to address problems in the University’s grading policy, and the Update on Grading and Workload, which identified these issues. “The latter demonstrates why our current grading practices are a problem, while the former explains why this is a problem that can be solved by nothing short of a cap,” she wrote.
These revisions build on an initial grading proposal released on Feb. 6, 2026, which sought to address “grade compression” across Harvard College. The February proposal recommended that instructors in letter-graded courses “award A grades to at most 20% of the course enrollment plus 4,” while allowing courses to opt out of the cap by adopting SAT/UNSAT grading. It also proposed replacing GPA with average percentile rank for “internal purposes … such as honors, prizes, and awards,” and encouraging instructors to submit additional scoring or ranking information to help calculate percentile distinctions within courses.
On March 30, the student body was informed of the revisions in an email from HUA Academic Officer Hyunsoo Lee titled “HUA: Grading Policy Update.” In the email, Lee summarized the changes and referenced that 94% of students opposed the policy, according to an HUA survey from earlier this year. For students who want to be more involved, Lee attached an email template for students to send to professors to encourage them to vote either in favor of or against the policy. The email also included an overview of the HUA survey on the grading proposal, as well as a one-page summary with important information and statistics.
Student opinions, however, remain mixed. While Yassin Mohamedy ’29 supports neither the current nor former grading proposal, he does believe that the College has incorporated student feedback into the revisions. “A lot of students are unsure as to whether or not the administration will actually take student feedback into account when making these huge institutional changes,” he explained. “So I’m glad that it seems like they at least are for the time being.”
Still, Mohamedy does not see the updated policy as addressing key concerns, including increasing competition and missing the goal of recentering academics. By basing the cap on the total number of students taking the class, the policy increases the number of As awarded, but still artificially lowers grades. “It will bring grades down, naturally, but I think it’s an artificial way that will end up hurting students, and especially in the short term, without really making classes harder, which I think is the more organic solution to the problem,” he noted.
“It’s a good change to the policy, but as I said, I think it’s just making the policy less worse.”
Mohamedy also opposes the addition of SAT+ to the SAT/UNSAT scale, he said. “You take a class SAT/UNSAT because you don’t want to have a grade reflected for the class,” he noted. “I feel like by creating a SAT+, it almost starts to make it feel like a grading spectrum, which I think is very counterintuitive to the point of SAT/UNSAT.”
Meanwhile, Peyton White ’29 expressed similar views on the proposed grading policy changes, particularly the new timeline. “I think the most obvious issue is that, in many ways, it’s just kicking the can down the road. I don’t think delaying this by one year necessarily resolves any of the existing conflicts with the original proposal,” White said.
“Naturally, I tend to think about [grades] all the time. It’s a big determinant… for post-grad opportunities and the workforce,” he explained. While White acknowledged that the policy could create downsides, including “this cultivation of an even more competitive environment,” he also identified potential benefits. “In many ways, I do think it pivots academics and Harvard in general, away from that over-emphasis upon extracurriculars and back towards academics,” he added.
Not all students, however, will experience the policy. A junior from Adams House described feeling personally relieved by the postponement, even while maintaining concerns about the proposal overall. “Now that the grading cap is re-proposed to be moved after I graduate, it feels like a sense of relief. Like dodging a bullet,” the undergraduate said.
Still, the student expressed concern about how the policy could affect academic exploration, particularly for first-year students. “If this grading policy was put in place during my freshman year, I feel like I’d be less likely to take risks … for freshmen, I feel like it wouldn’t be helpful, it would be counterintuitive to them exploring different classes,” the student stated.
As the debate continues, some students remain unconvinced. “A clean-cut cap on grades isn’t the solution to this,” the junior concluded.
As Harvard faculty prepare to vote on April 7, the revised grading proposal continues to spark debate across campus. While student opinions remain mixed, in an April 1 email to the student body, Lee urged students: “Now is the time to get your voice heard.”
Sonia Singh ’29 (soniasingh@college.harvard.edu) and Julia Bouchut ’29 (julia_bouchut@college.harvard.edu)are interested to see how the policy will unfold.