Academic honors vs. Area of Housing

Colleges and Universities A-Z Smith College
1

<p>For the Smith College Class of 2008, distribution of Latin Honors vs. Area of Housing </p>

<table border="1">
<tbody><tr>

<th>Green Street/Center Campus</th>
<th>The Quad</th>
<th>Elm Street</th>
<th>Ada Scholars</th>
<th>Hampshire House (live off campus)</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td># Degrees, N=712</td>
<td>226</td>
<td>216</td>
<td>192</td>
<td>55</td>
<td>23</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>% of total</td>
<td>32</td>
<td>30</td>
<td>27</td>
<td>8</td>
<td>3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Summa cum laude, N=11</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>3</td>
<td>2</td>
<td>0</td>
<td>0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>%</td>
<td>54.6</td>
<td>27.3</td>
<td>18.1</td>
<td>0.0</td>
<td>0.0</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Magna cum laude, N=30</td>
<td>7</td>
<td>6</td>
<td>11</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>%</td>
<td>23.3</td>
<td>20.0</td>
<td>36.7</td>
<td>13.3</td>
<td>6.7</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>cumulative awards, N=41</td>
<td>13</td>
<td>9</td>
<td>13</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>%</td>
<td>31.7</td>
<td>21.9</td>
<td>31.7</td>
<td>9.8</td>
<td>4.9</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Cum laude, N=98</td>
<td>40</td>
<td>30</td>
<td>22</td>
<td>4</td>
<td>2</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>%</td>
<td>40.8</td>
<td>30.6</td>
<td>22.4</td>
<td>4,1</td>
<td>2.1</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>cumulative awards, N=139</td>
<td>53</td>
<td>39</td>
<td>35</td>
<td>8</td>
<td>4</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>%</td>
<td>38.1</td>
<td>28.1</td>
<td>25.2</td>
<td>5.8</td>
<td>2.9</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>

2

<p>Well, dang…PHP doesn’t support HTML tables.</p>

<p>I’ll try this in a clunky format:</p>

<p>For 2008 graduates of Smith College, Latin Honors vs. Area of Housing</p>

<p>Grads = 712</p>

<p>Green St./Center Campus, 226 (32%)
The Quad, 216 (30%)
Elm Street, 192 (27%)
Ada Scholars, 55 (8%)
Hampshire House [off-campus students], 23 (3%)</p>

<p>Summa cum laude, N=11
Green St./Center Campus, 6 (54.6%)
The Quad, 3 (27.3%)
Elm Street, 2 (18.1%)
Adas, 0 (0%)
Hampshire House, 0 (0%)</p>

<p>Magna cum laude, N=30, cumulative awards=41
Green St./Center Campus, 7 (23.3%):::cumulative 13, 31.7%
The Quad, 6 (20.0%):::cumulative 9, 21.9%
Elm Street, 11 (36.7%):::cumulative 13, 31.7%
Adas, 4 (13.3%):::cumulative 4, 9.8%
Hampshire House, 2 (6.7%):::cumulative 2, 4.9%</p>

<p>Cum laude, N=98, cumulative awards=139
Green St./Center Campus, 40 (40.8%):::cumulative 53, 38.1%
The Quad, 30 (30.6%):::cumulative 39, 28.1%
Elm Street, 22 (22.4%):::cumulative 35, 25.2%
Adas, 4 (4.1%):::cumulative 8, 5.8%
Hampshire House, 2 (2.1%):::cumulative 4, 2.9%</p>

<p>So for 2008, at any rate, Green St./Center Campus consistently outperformed The Quad for Latin Honors and did the best overall.
So half the cliche is true. Still don’t think that the Quad Bunnies have more fun.</p>

3

<p>Thanks, TheDad, great piece of work. D will try to keep the stats up!!!<a href=“Search” target=“_blank”><img src=“http://cdn.content.sweetim.com/sim/cpie/emoticons/000201CA.gif” border=“0”></a></p>

4

<p>Thanks, TD! Now you just have to tease out the grade thresholds for each level of Latin Honors. :)</p>

5

<p>Well, I believe the boundary between summa and magna was somewhere in the vicinity of 3.93 to 3.95. (Note: first-year grades are not counted for Latin Honors. Junior year away grades are counted IF they are from one of the four programs run by Smith College, are NOT counted otherwise.) </p>

<p>I’m not sure, but I think the number of awards are scaled as a percentage of the graduating class…it will be interesting to see Stacy’s stats when she gets them up…and calculations I think go as far as four decimal places.</p>

6

<p>I’d be interested to know whether these variations are statistically significant…TD, perhaps your daughter could run a little analysis?</p>

<p>One thing to keep in mind about these statistics is that students can choose which house to march with (from, I believe, the houses they lived in) and are listed in the program with wherever they march. For example, I lived in the quad my first year, then moved to and marched with a house in Center Campus. I have other friends who marched with their first year houses despite only living there for a quarter of their time at Smith. </p>

<p>I also stand by my hypothesis that Quad residents are more likely to get Fulbrights. But I haven’t tested that!</p>

7

<p>Oh, and since Latin Honors thresholds vary each year, knowing a threshold probably won’t help too much. I think my year, the cutoff for magna was in the low/mid 3.8s (grade inflation, anyone?)</p>

8

<p>Correction: now that I’ve woken up some more, I think the cut-off for summa was somewhere in the 3.97 to 3.98 range as calculated for Latin Honors. I think the cut-off from cum laude was somewhere in the 3.6 range but I can’t swear to it.</p>

<p>Stacy, quite right about the House listed at graduation…I don’t know anyway to dig for more info than that and it open’s up a multitude of ways of assessing the data. </p>

<p>I think D’s interest in running statistical tests on this data is somewhere south of zero. But the raw numbers are there so that anyone so inclined can do so. I’m rusty enough that I’d have to use a cookbook method and I’m not all that motivated but to my eye, the correlations look significant…though it will be interesting to see if your data for 2004 either confirms or conflicts with the 2008 data.</p>

<p>Fwiw, I don’t think a 3.8 for magna cum laude is eyebrow-raising…that’s only 6 percent of the class in the magna and summa range. Six percent above 3.8 if you can throw out first-year grades? </p>

<p>Further thinking on GPA… If the cum laude cut-off is around 3.6, that’s 20 percent benchmark, given the 2008 stats. I think I’d heard that the median was somewhere around 3.3, though that may be overall GPA, not GPA as calculated for Latin Honors. (D had three GPA’s: overall as calculated by Smith without one semester of JYA grades, overall as calculated by law and graduate schools including the JYA semester, and as calculated for Latin Honors.)</p>

9

<p>Also, some Adas graduate with a specific house (and they don’t have to live in Ada-only housing) and others graduate with the Ada Comstock scholar group.</p>

10

<p>Right. So, again, I used self-identification. No other way to do it. </p>

<p>If I had to guess, it would be somewhere around 14-18 Ada’s that graduated with their houses, using the 10 percent rule of thumb. The statistics suggest that you’d have one award winner to reassign. Shrug. Doesn’t change the picture significantly.</p>

11

<p>TD, thank you so much for crunching all those numbers! It’s intriguing to see the differences among the areas, even if they are somewhat imprecise because of self-identification. I wonder how students identify themselves according to area if they’ve lived in more than one. Perhaps it’s from satisfaction academically? Socially? Sense of tradition? Turning over a new leaf? Who knows? :slight_smile: In any case, thank you for doing it.</p>

<p>All the discussion about GPAs and Latin Honors has me dizzy. That’s a whole other realm. I’m just waiting till Thursday at Awards Day to find out if our daughter is valedictorian or not! (We’re proud of her whether she is or not.)</p>

12

<p>Carolyn, the fact that your daughter is even in the running for valedictorian is impressive. Congratulations to you and her.</p>

13

<p>Carolyn, what MWFN said re your D being in the running for valedictorian: congratulations. Whether she gets it or not, to be in the running is a fine thing. </p>

<p>From which stance I’ll make a couple of observations about Latin Honors at Smith. First, you [the student] have to aim at it; for instance, you have to carefully check off the Latin Honors breadth requirements and need to take that into consideration in your schedule. If you’re a double major (approximately 20 percent of the 2008 grads were), then scheduling becomes pretty tight.</p>

<p>Second, while you aim for it, there’s no point in obsessing over it. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and eight semesters is a long time. Particularly for summa and magna (as opposed to manga, which you get only if you’re studying Japanese), a little bit of luck is required to go along with the talent. One “B” in a four-unit course can knock you out of summa. A two-unit course that grades partially on attendance when you’re juggling rehearsals and presentations that may conflict may give your GPA a ding. You do your best and let the chips fall where they may. That way, you put off the pressure until the last semester. :)</p>

14

<p>Momwaitingfornew and The Dad, thank you for acknowledging my daughter’s efforts. You are right, TD, that goals like this are a marathon: you set your goals, consistently work hard, do your best, and let the chips fall, even in the last semester! :-)</p>

<p>I’ll let you know what happens Thursday.</p>

15

<p>Congratulations to your daughter, CarolynB!
As for the highest Latin Honors , as TheDad says, it commands a hefty load of planning, and also, imo, avoiding classes that might be too challenging or time-consuming if you’re going for summa. One wonders if that is the real point of a top class education…</p>

16

<p>

Not necessarily so. But this is where things like sleep deprivation set in. D did not tell us until afterwards, because it was her life and she didn’t want us to flip out, the number of times she was up past 3am during her last semester. I think the only concessions D ever made to protecting GPA was checking out which of two profs to take for a given course to see whose style was more simpatico and to take one two-unit dance course P/NP after learning the hard way that the instructor partially graded on attendance and she had orchestra rehearsals and such that conflicted. </p>

<p>She took 20 units for five of six in-residence semesters and 18 for the sixth, (graduated with 148 units), plus was in orchestra, plus was active in one of the student organizations. Just the time commitment of the two-unit classes for musical instrument and dance was a burden even though there wasn’t significant homework associated with them. Sleep?!?! </p>

<p>It was bone-wearying enough that it’s taken her a year off just to get back into studying again, taking one course at night while working.</p>

17

<p>Lost in translat, thanks. I hear what you’re saying: what’s the point–getting good grades or cherishing learning? So far, my daughter has gone for the most challenging courses available and has excelled despite that; I don’t think that will really change for her because she knows, deep down, what she really values. She brought home her grades today and she said she was most proud of her 97 in AP Calculus for the year; she sweated bullets for that class and stretched herself tremendously. Maybe I’m an idealist, but to me, true substance always wins in the long run.</p>

18

<p>I have no worries about your daughter, and I know that she"ll be as happy at Smith as mine.
PS: i still haven’t learnt to post smilies. :D</p>

19

<p>TD, hearing about your daughter’s experience just makes me feel tired, and I don’t even yet understand all the significance of what she did! Life is about choices, and she obviously chose to put her all into what she was doing. Since then, it sounds like she needed some mellow time and I’m glad she has given herself permission to do that.</p>

<p>Lost in translat, I still don’t know how to do emoticons! I have to ask my computer-savvy twins one of these days—perhaps after Sunday’s graduation. :-)</p>

20

<p>TD, your daughter is truly a summa, and her achievements are mind-blowing, as are those of other students/daughters on this board, but after 2 years of CC forum, I have learnt to my dismay that many students err on the side of caution by choosing to avoid or drop GPA spoilers. My D, being somewhat hyperactive, also goes for an insane amount of credits (44 this year), as well as orchestra and Stride research, and this has certainly already cost her High Honors. One the other hand, she now feels freer to explore fields she is interested in, but in which she doesn’t excell, such as Fine Arts and music composition. Maybe she’ll even feel up to taking a maths course in the next two years!</p>