Honors degrees at Harvard down from 90% of the class to 50% of the class

Colleges & Universities Harvard University
1

<p>The lucky Class of 2005 experiences the new tighter standards</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=508139[/url]”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=508139&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Graduating with a Summa or Magna were always difficult…
These were and are significant honors.</p>

<p>But Harvard would pratically give away Cum Laude degrees and
Cum Laude in General Studies degrees like water.
I especially thought the Cum Laude in General Studies honors were nothing but a joke… you did not have to take the honors track in your field, nor write a thesis, and as long as you maintained a B-minus average… then you got Cum Laude in General Studies.</p>

<p>All they really needed to do to reduce the number of honors degrees was just axe the Cum Laude in General Studies award.</p>

3

<p>This year, getting a cum laude in general studies is actually quite a bit harder than getting a cum laude in your field. You need at least a 3.657 I think for a CL in GS and only a 3.414 for cum laude in field. Some fields don’t even make you write a thesis for honors so it’s a matter of taking a few more department classes to be eligible for the CL in field. I think it’s a symptom of the blinkeredness of the department system that getting a good grade in a 90-level English seminar is considered more academically honorable for me than getting one in a higher-level math class.</p>

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<p>Yes, I know they’ve made it more difficult…
I just wonder where the heck they came up with 3.657 or 3.414 for cutoffs… gee, why not make it pi+0.5 = 3.6415926…</p>

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<p>I think they took the minimum GPAs of people who on the basis of their theses got magna cum laude for the 3.657–not sure where the 3.414 came from, maybe it was a cutoff for a certain percentile of the class. The way they do it now, they’re cutoffs that change every year based on the GPAs of the graduating class.</p>

<p>Anyway, I’m just bitter because despite having a GPA right around A- and having deliberately sought out some challenging classes, I probably won’t get any kind of honors at all.</p>

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<p>ah</p>

<p>Once again Harvard is finally handling their business after following Princeton’s lead. This is to be expected of course.</p>

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<p>Princeton is attempting to force a reduction in grades.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2004/04/27/opinion/10432.shtml[/url]”>http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2004/04/27/opinion/10432.shtml&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;