Grade point average cutoffs to graduate with Latin honors for the class of 2025 remained unchanged from their record high last year.

This year, a GPA of 3.98 or higher earned the distinction of summa cum laude, while at least 3.95 and 3.90 merited magna cum laude and cum laude distinctions, respectively, according to Paul McKinley DRA ’96, Yale College’s associate dean for communications. The class of 2023 was the first class for which the cutoff for summa cum laude was as high as 3.98.

“In my experience, grades are inflated pretty much across the board and A’s hardly mean anything anymore,” Andy Nilipour ’25 wrote to the News.

Nilipour is one of 12 seniors interviewed by the News who found the high Latin honors cutoffs unsurprising given the persistent grade inflation at Yale. Some said the Latin honors system disadvantages students in STEM disciplines that tend to award lower grades.

Since 1988, Yale College guidelines have stipulated that no more than the top five percent of seniors graduate summa cum laude, the next 10 percent graduate magna cum laude and the 15 percent after that graduate cum laude.

To achieve a 3.90 GPA and therefore be in the 70th percentile classwide for GPA, a student must have been awarded two As for every A minus, assuming that student earned only grades in the A-range throughout their time at Yale.

According to a 2023 study by economics professor Ray Fair, grading distributions had not returned to pre-pandemic levels since a COVID-era surge in A-range grades. 79.62 percent of grades awarded in the 2021-22 academic year were in the A range — a year that set a record and was the class of 2025’s first year. The number fell slightly to 78.97 in the 2022-23 school year.

Fair’s study also found significant disparities in grading patterns between fields, with humanities departments awarding a greater percentage of A-range grades than other departments. Just 52.39 percent of grades in economics courses were in the A range, compared to 92.37 percent in history of science, medicine and public health on the opposite end of the spectrum.

Latin honors are awarded based on uniform GPA cutoffs, causing concern from some recently graduated seniors that the current Latin honors system favors humanities majors far more than STEM majors.

“The bigger issue with the current system might be based on a lack of clear standardization of excellence and grade-merit across departments,” Atticus Margulis-Ohnuma ’25 said.

Margulis-Ohnuma added that he believes the grade inflation is a symptom of a wider problem at Yale — namely, the university’s desire to allow students who were accustomed to stellar grades and abundant praise in high school to continue receiving that treatment.

Hannah Han ’25, who double majored in molecular, cellular and developmental biology and humanities, acknowledged the differences in grading between the majors. 

“I’d say that there are more objective, quantitative measures of success in STEM classes,” Han wrote to the News, though she acknowledged that some humanities classes do have rigorous grading.

Of the 12 seniors interviewed by the News, nine said that they were not aware until senior year about Yale’s policies regarding Latin honors. Only one felt that the Latin honors designation was particularly important, while others said they put more weight on departmental honors or election to Phi Beta Kappa, the country’s oldest academic honor society.

Latin honors are awarded based on a student’s cumulative GPA, while Phi Beta Kappa selections hinge on the proportion of straight A grades earned across the classes a student has taken. A student who graduates summa cum laude may not be inducted to Phi Beta Kappa if that student has a high number of “credits” without attached letter grades from courses taken Credit/D/Fail.

“I think it is a little messed up that the only three things they say about you at graduation are major, Latin honors and distinction in the major, when the latter two are almost never discussed,” William Cho ’25 said.

Before 1988, Latin honors cutoffs were determined based on the percentage of A’s and A minuses a student earned. A student with 80 percent of A’s and A minuses would earn summa cum laude, and around half of the class graduated with Latin honors. Now Yale caps the percentage of the class graduating with honors at 30 percent.

Yale awards Latin honors to a much smaller percentage of graduating seniors than some of its Ivy League peers. Harvard awards Latin honors to up to 60 percent of its graduating class, while Princeton usually awards Latin honors to nearly 50 percent of seniors, though it has no specific limit.

Members of the class of 2010 needed GPAs of 3.76, 3.85 and 3.93 to graduate with cum laude, magna cum laude and summa cum laude honors, respectively.

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