At Columbia College, latin honors will be awarded “to the top 25 percent of the graduating class. Honors are determined by an undergraduate student’s cumulative GPA for all work at Columbia, with the top 5 percent of the graduating class being awarded summa cum laude, the next 10 percent being awarded magna cum laude, and the remaining 10 percent awarded cum laude.”
At Barnard, the GPA cutoff will also be reset every year (disrupted by Covid due to mandated P/F grades for some semesters) so that “the top 5 percent of the graduating class being awarded summa cum laude, the next 10 percent being awarded magna cum laude, and the remaining 20 percent awarded cum laude.”
For 2020-21, this worked out to 3.97 for summa cum laude, 3.88 for magna cum laude, and 3.76 for cum laude. In either case, SCL/MCL implies approx. top 15% of class.
For both colleges, 10% of graduates may be elected to Phi Beta Kappa by faculty, the first 2% already being elected by the end of the last fall semester!
However, for that greek honor, GPA alone is no guarantee to being inducted.