Six years after the end of Wellesley’s “grade deflation” policy, grades at Wellesley have been steadily increasing. 46% of grades received were A’s in the 2023-2024 school year, a 20-percentage-point increase from a decade ago.

According to data from the Office of Institutional Research, 69% of grades given in the 2023-2024 academic year were in the A-range (A/A-), compared to 20% in the B-range (B/B-), and 10% in lower ranges. 

Since the 2014-2015 academic year, A-range grades increased by 20 percentage points, B-range decreased by 16, and lower ranges dropped by 5. The percentage of A’s peaked in 2020-2021 at 51% due to the drop in letter grades awarded because of the College’s mandatory credit/non policy for nearly all courses during the pandemic. Since then, the amount of A’s has dropped 5 percentage points.

While it’s unclear if Wellesley has grade inflation, it’s clear that many faculty at the College do not support artificially inflated grades.

“By making perfection the norm, you’re actually increasing stress rather than decreasing stress,” said Economics department chair Akila Weerapana. “I think students get stressed about bad grades when they think that everybody should be getting perfect grades.”

Despite the increase in the number of A’s, Wellesley students generally do not feel it is easy to receive an A in any classes. In a Wellesley News Instagram poll, 48% of the 265 respondents felt that their grades accurately reflected the difficulty of their classes. However, 45% felt that they were being graded too harshly.

Rahnuma Aroshi ’25, Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics Major, said that her grades do not reflect how much she tries in class. 

“I didn’t realize for the longest time, you just couldn’t get an A [in a] class. That’s just not a thing… Even just having a B takes so much effort,” Aroshi said.

According to many department chairs, more often than not, grading depends on the individual instructor. 

Weerapana said that instructors do not want to teach a class where “someone is telling them what to do” and that it does not make sense for one grading distribution to work across different sections of the same class.

Instead, many instructors bring their own philosophy to grading. When Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience Deborah Bauer was asked about her personal philosophy on grading, she found it “hard to distill down.” 

“Grad schools or employers are sometimes interested in grades to distinguish between candidates. For students, it’s often feedback on how they’re doing in a course, and it can sometimes be a motivator to put effort in,” Bauer said. 

For Weerapana, he sets the bar high and helps students get to that bar. 

“Wellesley students are smart, they’re talented. My attitude has always been that I will challenge you as much as appropriate. If you get an A, that’s great. But if you don’t get an A, that doesn’t mean you have failed. It just means that there’s more work to be done,” Weerapana said. “I think that’s generally consistent with faculty in the economics departments. Straight A’s are not the norm here.”

While each instructor has their own teaching and grading philosophy, departments still convene annually to share data on grades in their classes. During these discussions, departments typically discuss the purpose of grading as well as grades trends across departments and in the department, according to Bauer.

The Neuroscience department found that there was an increase in higher grades at Wellesley as a whole and saw “some” of that increase reflected within the department. Rao commented that the average grade in the history department is probably “a little higher than a B-plus.” Grades in the Economics department have not fluctuated significantly, according to Weerapana. 

For departments that did have an increase, it’s difficult to pin down exactly what the causes are.

“As teachers, we’re trying to do our best to help students learn. So an increased grade could mean decreased challenge, or it could mean that we’re doing a really good job getting students to where we want them to be,” Bauer said. “It’s really hard to disentangle those two.”

In an attempt to unravel grade inflation and better teaching, the Neuroscience department had once implemented a standardized exam for students to take throughout their years in the department. However, according to Bauer, it ultimately “didn’t really get at the question,” and the department discontinued the test. 

The Math, Political Science, Physics, Women and Gender Studies, and Art department chairs declined to comment. The News was unable to attain department-specific grade data.

Compared to other institutions, Wellesley seems to be doing better at minimizing rampant grade inflation. At peer liberal arts institution Williams College, 50% of grades were an A. At Ivy League schools, where grade inflation seems rampant, 63% of grades were an A at Brown in 2023-2024, 79% of grades were an A at Harvard in 2020-2021, and 58% were an A at Yale in 2022-2023. 

Even compared to cross-registered classes at MIT, Babson, and Olin, Wellesley students seem to feel that Wellesley is harder. Out of the 219 respondents to The News’ Instagram poll, 75% felt that it’s harder to get a good grade at Wellesley compared to cross-registered schools. The News previously reported in 2018 that some Wellesley students were cross-registering to boost their GPA. 

“I’ve heard a lot about how liberal arts classes at MIT are easier than liberal arts classes at Wellesley, and I think it’s reflected in the way where it’s much more participation based, and it doesn’t feel like you have to have this high degree of perfection in your work,” said Aroshi, while comparing an MIT history class with a Wellesley history class. 

At Wellesley, grades generally mean a lot to students, especially those who are looking to go to grad school. Some students feel that the difficulty of obtaining a good grade affects their ability to learn.

“Rather than focusing on learning, a lot of times it’s more like, how can I just pass?” Aroshi said.

While students themselves place a lot of importance on grades, Weerapana suggests that faculty have a role in shaping students’ perspectives about grades.

“I think students in general put too much weight on grades versus learning,” said Weerapana. “But I think we do a bad job as instructors by sending a message that perfection is right.”