Thats a great idea but presumably too late now for OP if it’s her last semester. However, the different types of honors are weird to me. UCLA has three different categories: college honors (based on taking a certain number of designated “honors” courses), departmental honors (based on writing an honors thesis) and Latin honors (based on final GPA, with percentile cutoffs). So in theory you can earn three different honors, though apparently people think college honors are the least worthwhile.
The differences in Latin cutoffs are very significant: D18 has top 1%, next 2.5% and then next 4.5% whereas S18 has top 5%, next 5% and next 10%, while the grade distributions are not much different (ie the top 5% GPA cutoff is about 3.93 at both).
My daughter is graduating with an honors citation from the UMD Honors College and participated in other programs like one called Federal Fellows. And she has a job in her field after she graduates. So like I said this is definitely a first world problem.
My daughter graduated Wednesday where she was noted in the program as receiving Magna Cum Laude honors. We were waiting patiently for her last semester grades to be finalized so we could proudly proclaim that she was really Summa Cum Laude after getting all As.
She was most worried about one class but that grade came through as an A so she thought it was smooth sailing after that. But turns out that the last grade she was waiting for in the “easy” class that she had a 95 in going into the final must not have been so easy or perhaps “senioritis” kicked in because she ended up with an A- in one class. Hubris, thy name is adlgel lol.
Needless to say, we are incredibly proud of her and all she has accomplished, that 3.984 GPA didn’t earn itself!
my kiddo #3’s college has 4.33 for an A+; no one can have higher than a 4.0; so in reality, a kid could graduate with several B’s or A-'s - yet graduate with a 4.0 with enough A+'s to balance it out. whatever - it helps with his GPA to keep his scholarship.
#2 kiddo’s U did not give above a 4.0 for an A+; which was made her sad a few semesters. she had several A+'s and an A-; and that kept her off the dean’s list for her particular college. it’s all good though - to be worrying about these things!
And the saga continues . . . my daughter talked to the prof who gave her the A- and negotiated her way to an A which has now been officially acknowledged on her transcript. Obviously this new slightly higher gpa and summa cum laude honors will not have any material difference on her life but I give her props for taking the shot. As they say, you miss all the shots you don’t take.
I dug out my transcript (yes, pack rat), and I have 17 A+ grades from grad school, where it was the equivalent of a 4.33. The dean told me that although they don’t release official class rankings and related data, I had the highest GPA he’d seen in his 20 years at the school.
I got a plaque at graduation and it hasn’t meant anything, anywhere, since then.
(I actually got the plaque in the mail, I didn’t go to graduation)
question- did the school have your gpa over 4.0? I’m curious if colleges do that.