<p>How important is it to have an honors designation on one's transcripts when applying to graduate school? Is the main benefit derived from the completion of an honor's thesis and the opportunities for research that that provides?</p>
<p>depends on the program you’re applying to and how it all relates.</p>
<p>In the humanities, yes, the main benefit is the research/thesis.</p>
<p>However, just to be clear, at many institutions, one need not be in an “honors” track to do this.</p>
<p>Latin honors matters very little if at all. And at most places Latin honors is different from the honors track - Latin honors is usually based almost completely on GPA.</p>
<p>Latin honors is based on GPA and position within the class: summa cum laude, magna cum laude, cum laude. Honors theses add “with highest distinction, with high distinction, and with distinction” to the degree. I don’t know what attending an honors college adds, although if a thesis is required to complete the program, then you’ll probably get the “distinction” designation.</p>
<p>As for whether it counts, it does, just a little, when applying after being out of college for a year or more. You will enter it under “awards and honors” on the application. The primary reason to do a honors thesis is to get the research experience, which will have a much larger impact on your application than will the distinction itself.</p>
<p>For most schools, the “Latin honors” designation is given only at commencement – i.e., when final GPA and class rank are known. Therefore, if you’re applying to grad schools in the fall of your senior year, your transcript won’t show any Latin honors designation because they haven’t been determined yet.</p>
<p>If, however, you are talking about participating in an “honors college” or other honors program that has distinct academic requirements for a select group of students, then there might be a slight boost given to your grad school application if that is shown on your transcript. But it would really depend on what relevance that honors program has to your intended course of study in graduate school. For example, if the honors program is waited heavily towards the humanities (classics-heavy reading, “capstone” thesis, etc.) – as it is at many universities – then the honors designation won’t have much impact if you’re going for a PhD in math or computer science. </p>
<p>And any research/thesis experience that you have will be judged on its own merits – whether it is done under the auspices of a designated “honors” program, as a funded research assistant, or just done independently with one of your professors.</p>
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<p>I think this is very true. At my undergrad I wanted to do an honors research project, but since I was graduating a semester early they said I was ineligible (I had more than enough room in my schedule to fit all the required research credit, but they said it had to be divided across a whole year). I just did research without the honors heading instead and feel it didn’t affect my grad school results at all.</p>