Since the Class of 2025 first stepped foot on Princeton’s campus, their interests have evolved: 50 percent more students ended up studying Computer Science than the number who thought they would when entering Princeton, and slightly more seniors studied American Sign Language and Japanese compared to last year. Nearly 50 percent of seniors never earned an A+ grade — probably worse than their performance in high school. Did ChatGPT change how the Class of 2025 approached their Princeton education? Read on to find out.
This year, more B.S.E. students have reported earning a 4.0 GPA than A.B. students, similar to the Class of 2024. The overall distribution of cumulative GPAs has remained broadly consistent with what was reported in the Class of 2024 senior survey. Similar to the Class of 2024 respondents, students in the Class of 2025 who have never played for a varsity sports team generally reported higher GPAs than those who have. About 66 percent of Class of 2025 respondents reported having a GPA higher than 3.7— six percentage points higher than their Class of 2024 counterparts.
When the Class of 2025 first entered Princeton, the two most popular majors were Computer Science, with nine percent interested, and SPIA, with 8.3 percent interested. Four years later, 13 percent of the Class of 2025 ended up studying Computer Science, combining both A.B. and B.S.E. degrees, and 8.2 percent studied SPIA — almost identical to the proportion interested in their first year. Electrical and Computer Engineering more than doubled from last year to 6.2 percent of Class of 2025 seniors in the department, replacing Civil and Environmental Engineering as the second largest B.S.E. major. French and Italian made it on the list this year with 0.8 percent seniors, surpassing all other foreign language majors. The majority of the Class of 2025 studied Spanish, French, Chinese, or no language at all. The number of seniors who studied American Sign Language (ASL) rose to 5.1 percent, which is 3.4 percentage points higher than the Class of 2024. ASL now occupies the fifth most popular studied language for the Class of 2025.
The number of seniors who admitted to cheating rose to approximately 30 percent, around one percentage point higher than the Class of 2024. The number who used ChatGPT on an assignment when it was not allowed rose to 27.7 percent, up by 12.5 percent from the Class of 2024. The Class of 2025, of course, had access to GPT-4o for an additional academic year compared to the Class of 2024. The number of students who knew of a peer violating the Honor Code and chose not to report it increased slightly, and the number of people who reported someone for cheating also rose, though in 2024, zero respondents selected the latter option. Despite the apparent rise in Honor Code violations, however, there was no significant increase in instances where individuals were called before the Honor Committee.
While Princeton remains test-optional, the Class of 2025 seniors didn’t take significant advantage of the test-optional policy, which was designed to counteract the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on secondary schooling. Back when they were applying in 2020, only around 14 percent of seniors chose not to submit their SAT/ACT scores. Twelve percent of seniors reported that more than eight people from their high school also attended Princeton, while a majority report only 1–2 Princetonian peers from their same high school, around 65 percent of respondents.