Responses To College Honors Rules Vary

Departments are reacting differently to new College rules that reduce, by a third, the number of students who can graduate with Harvard-awarded Latin honors.

While some departments have tightened up requirements, other head tutors and directors of undergraduate studies say their departments expect to recommend the same numbers of students for honors as they have in past years.

The concentration’s recommendation is “necessary but not sufficient” for a particular level of Latin honors, according to Social Studies Director of Undergraduate Studies Anya E. Bernstein.

The College will award Latin honors based on students’ overall grade-point averages (GPA’s), not just on their concentration work.

“When we look at that group in order to determine Latin honors, we look at overall GPA, and that’s what will determine the smaller group that will receive Latin honors,” Assistant Dean of Harvard College John T. O’Keefe writes in an e-mail.

Around five percent of the members of the graduating class who have been recommended for highest honors in their concentrations will receive summa cum laude degrees, the same cap from previous years. Students whose concentrations recommend them for high honors may be awarded magna cum laude degrees, bringing the total number of summa and magna degrees to no more than 20 percent.

Another 30 percent of seniors who have been recommended for concentration honors will graduate cum laude.

No more than 10 percent of students with high GPA’s who are not recommended by their concentration for honors may also receive cum laude degrees. Such students are chiefly those who have chosen not to write theses or pursue other honors projects, O’Keefe wrote.

As a result of the new College policy, some departments tightened up requirements.

The Department of Physics raised grade cut-offs for recommending the different categories of honors, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Director of Undergraduate Studies Howard Georgi ’68 wrote in an e-mail.

“We did rewrite our honors policy because of the new guidelines, and we will likely do so again next year to make the bar even higher,” Georgi wrote.

The Social Studies program, though, has not reconsidered its honors policy as a result of the College-wide changes.

“We really don’t expect to do anything differently. Our understanding is that this is the College saving us from ourselves and imposing a cap on the number of honors being given out college wide,” Bernstein said.

The English department also made proportionally the same number of honors recommendations at each level as it did last year, according to Professor of English and American Literature and Language and Elisa New, who is also director of undergraduate studies for the department.

But this year fewer English concentrators chose to write theses—a departmental requirement for high honors—because they had a lower chance of graduating magna than in previous years, New wrote in an e-mail.

“Students who might have opted to do a thesis to ensure magna eligibility did not opt to do theses this year but rather to take additional advanced courses. We saw roughly 10 more students doing non-thesis honors this year than we did last year,” New wrote.

While departmental recommendations will appear on students’ transcripts, they do not ensure that students will receive the honors specified by their concentrations.

And, even with the new honors policies in effect, head tutors and directors of undergraduate studies for several concentrations emphasize the strength of the graduating class.

“In fact we actually have a tremendous class this year and we’re actually recommending more students for Latin honors. We have a higher number of summas and magnas than in previous years,” Bernstein said.

—Staff writer Sara E. Polsky can be reached at polsky@fas.harvard.edu.