<p>so, what’s the deal with this at harvard? gpa reqs? does courseload/major matter?</p>
Hanna
December 23, 2009, 6:26pm
2
<p>Students concentrating in social science, natural science, and humanities are compared only to others within their division. Invitations to membership are divided among the three areas in proportion to the number of concentrators within each class. Courseload does matter – they want to see a breadth of liberal arts and not too many gut classes. The people in my class who were elected as juniors or senior fall mostly ended up graduating summa. For election at commencement, you probably need to be in the 3.8 range.</p>
<p>thanks, just wanted to bump this to see if anyone had any more concrete numbers or other info…</p>
cosar
December 26, 2009, 1:24am
4
<p>This may help:</p>
<p>[Eligibility</a> & Election Phi Beta Kappa](<a href=“http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k19082&pageid=icb.page189953]Eligibility ”>http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k19082&pageid=icb.page189953 )</p>
<p>
To be elected to Alpha-Iota of Massachusetts, the Harvard College chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, a student must possess a record of outstanding scholarly achievement, showing both depth of study and breadth of intellectual interest. </p>
<p>Undergraduates are elected to the Harvard College chapter of Phi Beta Kappa three times a year. The elections take place in the meetings of committees who carefully consider transcripts and confidential letters of recommendation. Twenty-four juniors are elected in March or April, forty-eight seniors in November, and an additional group of seniors (typically about ninety-six) in May to bring the total number of students elected in each graduating class to no more than 10 per cent of the class. In the Junior 24 and Senior 48 elections, the election committees pay particular attention to the difficulty and intellectual coherence of the candidate’s program. </p>
<p>Election committees are composed of Harvard faculty and senior staff who are members of Phi Beta Kappa, as well as current undergraduates already elected to the Chapter. For each election, three committees are convened – one each in Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, and Humanities. Each committee has before it a list of candidates that is twice the number to be elected. The number of names on each committee’s list reflects the proportion of students in the class who are concentrating in that subject-area. For example, in the Junior 24 election, the number of candidates will always be 48, and typically they will be in the proportions: 24 in Social Sciences - 14 in Natural Sciences - 10 in Humanities. The number elected in this case would be 12 in Social Sciences, 7 in Natural Sciences, and 5 in Humanities.
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