To the editor: I read with interest the article on Harvard limiting the number of A’s (“Harvard faculty votes to make it more difficult for undergrads to earn A’s,” May 20). When I was an engineering undergrad at Stanford in the 1960s, there was a guideline in the engineering school regarding grading. This guideline stipulated that undergrad grades should be distributed generally as follows: 15% A’s, 35% Bs, 35% Cs and 15% Ds. Fails were considered outliers and were handled separately.
However, this guideline was applied with some intelligence, rather than strictly. As an example, if the lowest grade in the top 15% was 93% and the top grade in the B category was 92%, with the next highest B an 89%, then the 92% would be included in the A group. In other words, scores that were close together, with the next highest or lowest only a few points separated, then those that clumped together would get the same grade, even if it meant not strictly following the guideline.
With grade inflation at Harvard, as well as generally at colleges and universities, I’m reminded of Garrison Keillor in his weekly introduction to “The Prairie Home Companion” including the “statistic” that “all the children [in his fictional Lake Wobegone] are above average.” That is, of course, a mathematical impossibility.
Ed Schoch, Westchester
