<p>To my understanding, it is possible to get over a 4.0 at rice, since rice awards a 4.3 for A+'s</p>
<p>I was wondering how hard it would be to earn over a 4.0 gpa over the course of a student's career at Rice</p>
<p>Also, how would a greater than 4.0 gpa be seen by med schools (would they be skeptical, is the average GPA of a Rice student matriculating into a med school higher than the average of students from other schools, etc)?</p>
<p>Yes, it’s possible to earn over a 4.0 for you total time at Rice. It’s difficulty obviously depends on the classes that you take, and different professors have different ideas about what earns an A+ (some not giving any at all). If you look at this site you can see that the GPA cutoff for summa cum laude (which is the top 5% of the class) has been over 4.0 for several years while the cutoff for magna cum laude (the 5th to 15%) is just under 4.0. [Academic</a> Honors: Main | Office of the Registrar | Rice University](<a href=“http://www.registrar.rice.edu/students/aca_honors/#latin]Academic”>http://www.registrar.rice.edu/students/aca_honors/#latin) That gives you an idea about how often this happens.</p>
<p>While I know of pre-med students with over a 4.0, it’s definitely a rare occurrence. The classes you have to take for pre-med tend to make it harder to get over a 4.0.</p>
<p>There’s definitely a difference in GPA distribution among the different departments, which is why I’m of the opinion that Latin honors should be awarded based on department/school rank instead of overall rank.</p>
<p>This depends very largely on your major. During the long, long wait before graduation I went through the program where academic honors are noted. There was one - ONE - engineering summa who I would define as very involved, social, and dedicated to extracurriculars. After four years of classes together, I didn’t even know who the summas in my major (bioengineering) were. Then again, one of my roommates managed to snag over a 4.0 while triple majoring in psychology, history, and religious studies while drinking 4-5 nights a week.</p>
<p>I’ve had this conversation with a lot of people before and I do understand why people believe the honors should be given based on department (especially for engineering) I just still don’t think it would really be “fair”. Just thinking about psych, which I’m most familiar with, only 10 classes are required for the major, leaving 30 or more other classes to be taken. I know basically two groups of people within the major, people who fill those other classes with other social sciences and humanities (generally considered the easy classes) and those who are in psych because there’s no neuroscience major and so take a lot of natural science, computer science, grad level neuro classes at Baylor, etc. So, why would it be any more fair to use the same cutoff for these two groups just because they share the same major (which only has to account for a quarter of their classes)? And what do you do about all the many double majors?</p>
<p>I know I’m in the minority opinion here, and I’m not trying to start any arguments but one complaint I did have a little at Rice is that I sometimes felt that I was a little looked down on or both my workload and accomplishments meant less because I was a psych major and not a natural sciences or engineering major. It’s something I wouldn’t like to see validated formally by the university.</p>
<p>^
That’s a very fair point. Under either system, though, those who take the easier classes will be at a GPA (albeit not an educational) advantage. Under a department/school-based system, at least some of the unfairness would be mitigated. I think the unfairness results not because some majors are easier or harder than others but because they’re not really comparable–the subjects and grading standards can be so different. I don’t think you can take an engineer with a 3.8 and say that, had she picked an easier major, she’d have a 4.0–just as I don’t think you can take a philosophy major with a 4.0 and assume he’d only have a 3.5 in engineering. That might be true sometimes, but the fact of the matter is that people who excel in one major wouldn’t necessarily excel in another major (or at least wouldn’t necessarily excel as much).</p>
<p>My issue, then, is more with the difficulty in comparing students in different departments. A system removing the need for that comparison would be an improvement IMO, as both have the problem of students taking the easy way out for a better GPA (which isn’t that much of a problem because the transcript will reveal that issue regardless of honors).</p>
<p>As for double majors, I think you can keep Latin honors as an overall designation by having students pick a primary major, counting the student with the major in which he/she has the highest GPA or the most credits or whatnot, or some other way of assigning the student to a single major for this purpose. Alternatively, you can just list Latin honors that are tied to a particular major (so a student could theoretically be summa in one major and magna in another).</p>
<p>As far as feeling like you’re looked down on because of your major, I can see where you’re coming from. I understand why some people might feel that way, but I personally don’t feel looked down on because I’m an academ. I’d be thoroughly surprised if anyone said anything about it.</p>
<p>I just wanted to clarify that I didn’t really feel looked down on because of my major just more like people assumed that I always had so much time and easier work because of it (which wasn’t really true because I loaded up my schedule with outside research and internships as so many people do) Sometimes if I would say something about how I had a hard assignment or so much to do, I would get an offhand comment about how it couldn’t possibly be as bad as some engineering problem set. This just irked me, but it wasn’t like it was an extremely common problem and usually just came from a few people. (Although I did get some enjoyment when some of these people took one of my major classes for a division requirement and complained endlessly about a paper that was pretty typical of length and difficulty for psych classes). Overall, though I was happy because I was fascinated by my major and thoroughly enjoyed most of my classes.</p>