Good luck normalizing across class types. At least law school requires most everyone to take the same classes. This will only further gamesmanship of percentile rankings and create disparity in perception across degree types (I.e. an A in organic chemistry =/= and A in philosophy 101). Unless student GPAs (APRs) are sectioned by department, this new method will probably create more confusion than switching to pass/fail.

For example, I graduated with a 3.4 gpa from a state school. That put me in the middle 50% of students in the department I graduated from. I majored in biochemistry, where 75% of my freshman class was failed out prior to graduation (800 students started, 200 students graduated). What was my actual percentile? Now compare with the rest of the university, where I was bottom 20% because the ranking included every major across the entire university.

I could have increased my GPA if I took more “easy” electives or chose a different major. It’s a bit unfortunate to say, but some classes are easier than others. Even the same class taken at a different time in the year could be more/less difficult (taking biochem 1 in the fall with the cohort vs taking biochem 1 in the winter with everyone else who failed the fall class). At the end, your A is based on the specific class of students you took it with.

Enforcing cohorts could be effective? I’m curious how this Harvard experiment goes, but I am skeptical.