<p>In fact, Wellesley’s policy has simply brought grades into line with private schools in general.<br>
At gradeinflation dot com, you can find a lot of information on this. Wellesley’s average grade had creeped up to 3.55 in 2000, which was quite high for private colleges. They simply brought the average down to 3.31, essentially at the average of private schools. If you go to the site, you can get information about many schools at the bottom of the page. It is notable that public (state) schools are significantly lower. Although the data is incomplete (but reasonably well documented as to source), you can see that most comparable schools have similar mean GPAs to Wellesley, even without a policy.</p>