Alicia Meehan, Campus Carrier deputy news editor

At colleges throughout the country, students are seeing an increase in A grades. At some highbrow universities like Harvard, which has a reputation for being competitive and offering intensive courses, a majority of students are currently achieving an A in most of their classes. 

In the 2010-2011 school year, 31.7% of Berry’s full-time students were on the Dean’s list, which requires a GPA of at least 3.5. During the 2024-2025 academic year, however, 49.2% of Berry’s full-time students were included in the Dean’s list. 

Provost David Slade said that the increase in high-level grades can be attributed to Berry introducing the Academic Success Center in 2010, as well as more academic support for students. Slade said that on average, over the past decade, Berry has admitted academically stronger students than in 2010.

Professor of History Laurence Marvin said that he grades his students fairly, but they may not be used to it. He said that it’s important that his students receive genuine feedback so they can learn and grow through their assignments.

“I’m candid and honest,” Marvin said. “I really do want students to get honest feedback, and if you always tell people that they’re wonderful and they’re the best, what does that mean? It’s like a participation trophy.”

Marvin said that he does not give his students any extra credit opportunities because he wants to prepare them for work after college. Future employers will not provide any extra credit outside of the work they give
their employees.

“You know in life, you don’t get extra credit, you just have to do the job,” Marvin said. “I treat my students like adults, and part of that is that you don’t get extra credit.”

Marvin referred to a New York Times article saying that Harvard administrators were considering introducing an “A+” grade to their books in order to distinguish between their “A” level students.  

“They were thinking about instituting an A plus to make a further distinction, which is just dumb,” Marvin said. “You’re just putting lipstick on a pig there.”

According to the NYT article, the percentage of Harvard students with A’s was 24% in 2005, rising to 62.8% at the height of the pandemic in the 2020-2021 academic year. 

Harvard has been working to increase the difficulty of achieving an A grade, lowering the percentage of students with A’s to 53%, as of Jan. 29, 2026. 

Marvin said that grade inflation is bad for everyone. Students who excel in their classes are not distinguished among other students who were given an A. He believes that grades begin to have no value as students apply to get into higher education like graduate, medical and law schools.

Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric and Writing Abhipsa Chakraborty said that all her assignments come with an in-depth rubric, which gives her students an exact goal to work toward. 

“The reason behind a really detailed breakdown of the grading rubric is it’s a great way to give students a good sense of what their professor is expecting to see in their work,” Chakraborty said. 

She said that she can justify each of the grades she gives out with her detailed rubric.

“If all students in my class get an A, I can stand by that and justify why they’ve all received an A because it’s quantitatively described,” Chakraborty said.

Chakraborty has worked at various colleges where the different student populations called for different grading styles. She said that the upper-level students she taught at the University at Buffalo and Georgia Tech were proactive in asking what they should do in order to achieve an A in her class. She had a different experience, however, with students in introductory and freshman communications courses who did not seek out extra ways to get an A. 

Marvin said that there is no shame in being an average student. According to Marvin, one of his advisees said that she was failing a class because she had a grade less than an A. Students who are used to receiving an A in all of their classes won’t be able to live up to their own expectations past their undergraduate degree. 

“It’s better to have these sorts of experiences now than to be out in the cruel world and to end up not succeeding or doing less than what you wanted to, and to end up being crushed by it,” Marvin said.