<p>I was just wondering if there were any other distinctions other than general honors for graduation? I know there are program honors specific to each major but does Chicago do cum laude distinctions? Thanks!</p>
<p>And yes, I realize I spelled question wrong...</p>
<p>D graduated in June. It was interesting to read the program for convocation, because it was written for anyone graduating: GSB, Law School, PhD, College, all rather lumped together, at least for 22 pages: Pages 6 to 28 of the program are titled: "The Award of Honors". First in that section is a section titled "Awarded General Honors with the Bachelor's Degree" By my count, about 2/3 of the undergrads were listed there. From there on, the section is rather confusing, as it is hard to tell what honors are for undergrads versus those for grad and professional - they are all lumped together.</p>
<p>Later in the program, starting on page 55, they list the undergraduates by program and degree, with small print for those that received departmental honors.</p>
<p>And that's it. No cum laude etc. Just general and/or departmental honors.</p>
<p>But there is a bit more to the story although it is a bit subtle. The academic stars of the College are recognized in one of three ways:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>selection to Phi Beta Kappa as a junior. This is no doubt the closest to summa that Chicago has. The 2008 graduating class had 42 kids in this category.</p></li>
<li><p>selection to PBK as a senior. Rather like "cum laude"?</p></li>
<li><p>overlapping with the first group are the "Student Marshals, described by the university as "appointed by the President of the University in recognition of their excellent scholarship and leadership. Appointment as a Student Marshal is the highest honor conferred by the University upon undergraduate students." This year there were 39. Curiously, 18 of the SM were selected PBK this year, 11 last year (as juniors) and 10 were not even PBK. So SM is a bit more of a mix?</p></li>
</ul>
<p>You may get the idea from this information, and it is an impression I received during my D's four years there, that Chicago does not go out of its way to recognize fine distinctions in academic achievement. In fact, it seems to go the other way. For example, it is impossible to find data on average GPA, class rank, distribution of honors and such (without counting in the graduation program). And most students do not seem to spend much time discussing grades or GPA.</p>
<p>So, if you want to show that you are an academic star, you need to target getting selected to PBK as a junior. Being a Student Marshall would solidify your credentials for post grad honors/scholarships/fellowships/awards. The problem is that the criteria for either honor are shrouded in secrecy.</p>
<p>Student Marshals are both academic and non-academic all-stars. I saw the Student Marshals walk at graduation and the ones I knew were the "Oh, you always said really smart things in class and you always had a smile on your face" type. </p>
<p>The one 4.0 that I know of was not a Student Marshal, which I found a bit surprising.</p>
<p>I found this link here:
<a href="https://studentleaderawards.uchicago.edu/maroon.cfm%5B/url%5D">https://studentleaderawards.uchicago.edu/maroon.cfm</a></p>
<p>which talks about some awards, and the Maroon publishes a list of students who were awarded throughout the year, only it too is confusing, because it includes graduates and undergraduates who have received fellowships, Metcalf stipends, FLAG grants, etc.</p>
<p>what do you have to do to get PBK?</p>
<p>One thing to bear in mind with all the awards is that, while they are nice, they really are secondary to a high GPA for a lot of endeavors. </p>
<p>Getting honors in the college is fairly easy - only a 3.25+. Over half get it though, so it does not tell people a lot. Selective employers often use it as a floor for resume consideration. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, you may find that for the field you are interested in, graduate schools do not value the efforts required for departmental honors. For most professional schools (law, medicine, business which eat up the bulk of graduates), you are much better off having a 3.6 and no thesis, and usually no chance at a departmental award, than a 3.4 and a paper no one will ever read but you and your advisor. In contrast, no research as an undergraduate will pretty much doom a soft social science or humanities PhD application. It is important to think through this as you role into your senior year. </p>
<p>Also, the standards for departmental honors vary widely across the school, so it is really difficult to compare someone getting such an award in art history with someone getting it in chemistry. </p>
<p>Finally, remember that PBK and the student marshal role both have a random element in selection (they cant take everyone with a high GPA), and hence you should not get down on yourself if you dont get tapped. </p>
<p>All in all, Chicago would be much better off going to a standard system of Latin honors, but I doubt they want to deal with the departmental infighting over establishing uniform standards.</p>
<p>UCA,</p>
<p>I agree to the most part with your comments on Student Marshall - it is a mix of academic and non-academic.</p>
<p>However, PBK is almost entirely GPA based. Selection to PBK is the closest an undergrad can come to being recognized for a GPA well above that for honors. And selection as a junior is the only signal a student can earn and send that their GPA is in the top few percent. There is little "random" about PBK selection.</p>
<p>And that was essentially what the OP was asking about.</p>
<p>Cosmos, PBK inductees are selected by the university. What you do is have a very high GPA. A 3.8 or 3.9 should do it.</p>
<p>Unalove, "Student Leader Awards" are completely different from awards that are primarily academic. I agree that SM is not strictly academic. They are more like "academic stars" who also have something more. And just curious - how many of this years' Student Marshalls did you actually know? 2? 3? 10? How well did you know any of them? Or was that just a glib generalization?</p>
<p>As I understand it - and someone please correct me if I am wrong - the difficulty of the specific courses you took and the diversity of your academic experiences are taken into account in the selection process, which does seem somewhat subjective to me since someone has to decide how to weight all this. I dont know if there is also a URM boost, but this would likewise add chance to the mix whatever its merits. </p>
<p>It may be idiosyncratic, but I had a very forlorn roommate who was not elected as a junior, despite being an eventual student marshal, having a near perfect (3.98ish) GPA, and being granted an interview for one of the golden British scholarships. Our mutual assumption was he had too much science and nothing otherwise outside of the core courses. I cannot imagine all the kids ahead of him had higher grades. </p>
<p>Also, schools vary the number they take over the years. It can be up to 10% of the student body, but many institutions will oscillate a little year-to-year below (or well below) this number to the chagrin of marginal candidates. </p>
<p>I agree though it certainly is one of the surest ways to demonstrate you carried yourself academically, and the only one that individuals outside the university can attached easy meaning to.</p>
<p>I don't have the list of Student Marshals in front of me, but I knew two exceptionally well (long conversations often well) and I always knew they had a spark of "something" beyond the typical student. Both are exceptional students and exceptional people, and both made no mention of their honor.</p>
<p>I would say that 3-4 others I knew well enough that I would have gone out of my way to say hi to them on the quads or at a party. I knew them through classes.</p>
<p>Then there were 5-6 others whom I didn't know particularly well, but they were friends of friends, and the kind of people I kept on intersecting with or reading about.</p>
<p>My characterization was not intended to be glib.</p>
<p>I would think that "general honors" and "cum laude" ("with honors") probably match up pretty well. If roughly 2/3 of undergraduates graduate with general honors, that is consistent with honors levels at similar colleges. (When Harvard recently tightened up its standards, it went from about 80% to about 60%.) </p>
<p>At my college, I believe Phi Beta Kappa roughly corresponded to the top 10% of the class by GPA. It was a little broader than summa cum laude (all of the summas I knew were junior PBKs).</p>
<p>Are you guys sure UChicago does not grant latin honors on diplomas?</p>
<p>No Latin honors at all. I agree its kind of dumb given that everyone else does, but it eliminates interdepartmental bickering since the only thing administrators really have to agree on is what makes the cut for “Honors in the College,” or a 3.25+ overall. I can only imagine what it would be like trying to hash out what makes a Summa in Spanish versus a Cum in Physics or something.</p>