For FLI students, Princeton’s rigor works in their favor

Two weeks ago, an internal report found that Harvard’s grading system was failing. More than 60 percent of grades awarded were A’s and the proportion of A grades had increased by 20 percent since 2015. In the Harvard Crimson’s Senior Survey, 20 percent of respondents in the Class of 2025 reported having a GPA that rounds to 4.0.

The same is not true at Princeton: Only 2.4 percent of ‘Prince’ survey respondents in the Class of 2025 had a GPA that rounded to 4.0. At the same time, approximately 66 percent of graduating senior respondents had a GPA of 3.7 or higher, which equates to an A-minus or higher on a 4.0 grading scale. Similar trends arise in the Senior Surveys for the classes of 2023 and 2024.

This is perfectly balanced: The fact that it is hard, but not impossible, to get “good” grades at Princeton allows students to demonstrate their capability and prove they will be successful upon graduation. This allows students to distinguish themselves from each other academically while maintaining an accurate measurement of what students gained from their courses, no matter their educational background before coming to Princeton. For first-generation, low-income (FLI) students like me, it helps prove our academic proficiency in a moment when our admission into competitive colleges is being challenged.

As an FLI student, it is easy to feel alienated from students who attended competitive preparatory schools or otherwise rigorous high schools. In the most recent Frosh Survey for the Class of 2029, nearly 50 percent of survey respondents reported that they attended a private, charter, or selective public school. These students are generally better prepared for the challenging curriculum in introductory courses, giving them an initial advantage that allows them to achieve higher grades.

However, as I have outlined before in this section, summer bridge programs like the Freshman Scholars Institute and FLI-specific resources like the Scholars Institute Fellows Program help students succeed and excel academically. Research shows that students who participate in these programs are not only better academically prepared than before but are also more likely to take on more challenging courses with no adverse consequences to their GPAs.

But attending a school whose main focus is academic excellence has more than one upside. FLI students may need to work to support their families through college rather than participate in extracurriculars. Because our grades mean something, FLI students at Princeton do not have to be concerned about doing the most clubs and the most impressive extracurricular activities in order to stand out post-graduation.

As a virtue of attending a rigorous institution, FLI students can both engage in extracurricular opportunities and more readily rely on their grades to make them competitive applicants in the job market or to professional schools. That is not the case at other schools with more lenient grading systems than ours, where competitive extracurriculars are the primary distinguishing factor between students.

In interviews with the Crimson, several students objected to the report and expressed their concerns for its implications. Among these concerns is the possibility that stricter grading could distract students from their extracurricular activities. However, moving away from an extracurricular culture helps FLI students who focus their time on academics because they cannot prioritize extracurriculars.

To my fellow FLI students at Princeton: Take advantage of your opportunities and cherish the fact that your grades don’t come easily. Your focus on academic success will pay off in the end. Only by adopting this attitude can we encourage students at peer institutions to welcome changes to their grading system that mirror ours.

Jorge Reyes is a columnist for the ‘Prince.’ You can read his column, “No Tiger Left Behind,” here. He intends to major in Chemistry and is from Louisville (Loo-uh-vul), Ky. He also bombed his second organic chemistry exam. He can be reached at jr7982[at]princeton.edu.