<p>^As someone who has also been through the process of applying for grad schools, I agree with RenTheSecond. The designation of honors itself is meaningless because of different requirements across universities. It’s nice to be able to say, “I graduated sum cum laude” but grad schools don’t really give a crap. It’s what the honors stands for (which is typically a good GPA and/or thesis) that’s important and grad schools would readily discern that from the rest of your application. </p>
<p>I myself chose not to graduate with honors despite a 3.95 GPA. Instead of staying on campus over the summer to do a thesis, I went with an outside internship and ended up presenting a poster at a major conference. The experience and results of that internship were more valuable to me than the honors designation that I would’ve gotten if I had stayed at Cornell over the summer to do research.</p>
<p>Exactly. My honors degree from Cornell is more of a feather in my cap relative to other Cornellians (ILRies, really) than anything it means relative to other students at other colleges. Graduate schools will care whether or not you produced as an undergrad.</p>
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<p>Frankly, it doesn’t look that competitive on the other side. Those who deserve to get accepted are accepted at top schools, irregardless of English or latin honors.</p>
<p>The major problem with students today is that they are focused on the goal and not the means. I had hoped the recession was going to change this, but perhaps not. Since when should titles and designations matter more than contributions and achievements? If you develop your interests and work diligently, you will do well.</p>
<p>It still seems to me that ILR is completely selling themselves short by voting against latin honors. Whether grads have gotten into schools without latin honors is a non-issue.
When students from CAS, ENG, ILR, and CALS are applying to the same law schools, business schools etc., why even risk the possibility of an ILRie not getting accepted or getting a job when compared to the others who do have latin honors. I just can’t believe the grad school admissions people would totally disregard an inconsistency like that. I also can’t believe ILR would think that is productive to vote against latin honors. No logic in this.</p>
<p>Haha! Hit by a bus. I might have been more careful crossing the street the week after I got into grad school. </p>
<p>Cayuga-- I don’t know why the ILR faculty voted against awarding latin honors, but I have some suspicions. As you know, rank ordering by GPA might breed grade-grubbing, and they may be reticent to rank theses precisely for these personal/prestige reasons. If you ever find out, let me know!</p>
<p>I asked this purely out of interest, I’m not exactly against what ILR is doing. </p>
<p>For one thing, I do feel that there is no impact on graduate schools/job placement from this series of events. All a Latin Honors on your transcript means is that you graduated with a certain GPA; I’m pretty sure most jobs/graduate schools will see your GPA anyways. Latin honors are far and wide KNOWN to be a distinction that is ONLY based on GPA; however, “with Honors” can have many implications. I don’t see it ever being the case where two students from Cornell would apply and a prospective employer might say “Oh, this student has a 3.8, but this student is a 3.8 Cumma sum Laude, so they are clearly the superior candidate”. However, seeing “with Honors” COULD mean simply GPA based, and it could mean something else-- in ILR’s case an honor’s thesis. (It is my own personal opinion that this is more honorable than a Latin honor.) </p>
<p>To me, it was much more a personal thing to strive for based on personal honor, and I was just wondering if there was some equivalent to it I could get at Cornell (possibly that Cornell had a university wide Latin Scholars program I didn’t know about). </p>
<p>Thanks to everyone for all the responses and the insight. </p>
<p>Cayuga/Ren, mind sharing what your theses were on? I’m just curious to gauge the scope of what different ILR students do them on.</p>
<p>My thesis contextualized social dialogue in game theory-- basically a political economics paper supervised in the International Comparative Labor (IC) department. </p>
<p>Case in point–the recommendations and conference invitations I received my senior year pretty much got me into my top-choice grad programs, and the honors “distinction” was a nice acknowledgment after-the-fact. </p>
<p>Old senior theses are available at the front desk in Catherwood library, which I found very helpful.</p>
<p>Is the GPA/rank requirement based on grades within ILR and courses to meet ILR requirements or does it count everything, including electives taken outside ILR? It makes me wonder if it’s worth risking the GPA points going for a language class or something else “outside my comfort zone” or if that wouldn’t really hurt me in terms of going for honors.</p>
<p>This is not the way to approach the decision to write an honors thesis. Study what you want to study and the grades will take care of themselves.</p>
<p>Thanks for the tip, gents. Looks like I’ll be stopping by the front desk on the first day I’m coming back to school… my big Winter Break project was/is to focus my ideas a little more. Do you know of anyone who has written a legislative history in the past?</p>
I’ve always taken the classes I’ve wanted to take in high school and, though I’ve suffered the consequences–a few Cs on my transcript…(cough) Latin (cough)–I don’t think it’s unreasonable have the GPA requirement for honors thesis eligibility in the back of my mind, especially if I’m looking into, oh say, an upper level calc class I could possibly bomb or something of that ilk. It doesn’t mean I’m obsessed with GPA, just aware of the consequences.</p>