[AnthonyMouse]

> All the students at Harvard are all selected from the tail end of the distribution and are very capable.

It seems like there is a pretty good way to handle this. Make the only letter grades A and F, i.e. it's pass/fail, but then additionally provide class rank percentile.

Even if everyone gets an A, in a class of 1000 students, someone is going to be at the 90th percentile and someone is going to be at the 10th and you can't inflate your way out of that.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

If I get a group of 30 kids together that are incredibly intelligent and highly motivated and have had “you must be the best and you must get A” beaten into their success and livelihood since before they could talk by their parents (and let’s be real that is a good chunk of Harvard grads) - do you really think that telling them that they are going to be stack ranked against each other is a healthy and productive thing that will produce the best outcome?

[AnthonyMouse]

There are only two things you can do here. One is that some Harvard students will have better marks than other Harvard students, and the other is that the school provides no other student evaluation than pass/fail, with the general expectation that approximately everyone will pass. You can't simultaneously give them different marks than each other and not.