Harvard doesn't award scholarships based on grades and they don't have a Dean's list. I can't speak to honors at Harvard, but at the Ivies with which I am more

Harvard doesn't award scholarships based on grades and they don't have a Dean's list. I can't speak to honors at Harvard, but at the Ivies with which I am more familiar, departmental honors carry a lot more weight than that magna/summa nonsense, and are awarded based on advanced work in your major, not on your GPA. I'm sure that students are praised for getting 'A's, but are they men and women, or are they golden retrievers? I was mostly an 'A' student as an undergrad, but I certainly never felt that I was "given the stink-eye" on the occasions that I earned a 'C'. To be clear, I'm not saying that 'B' and 'C' students are better off than 'A' students; I'm just observing that in my experience, they are also generally no worse off at the Ivies. I agree that there are silly incentives to get 'A's. We should probably do something about that. But that doesn't make it unreasonable to expect the alleged "best and brightest" to be able to see past those silly incentives.