With more students boasting flashy GPAs, academic honors lose their luster
Nearly half of students who graduated from Lehigh University, Princeton University and the University of Southern California this year did so with cum laude, magna cum laude or summa cum laude honors, or their equivalents. At Harvard and Johns Hopkins, more got the designations than didn’t.
Anyone with a grade-point average of at least 3.4 is granted Latin honors at Middlebury College; the number of students graduating with honors has been rising in recent years, the school says, and was north of 50% this spring.
.. “A 4.0 does signal something significant, that that student is good,” said Stuart Rojstaczer, a former Duke University professor who has studied grade inflation for years. “A 3.7, however, doesn’t. That’s just a run-of-the-mill student at any of these schools.”
.. 47% of high-school students graduated with an A average in 2016, up from 39% in 1998. Students keep earning the high marks in college.
.. Meanwhile, nearly 59% of seniors who graduated from Johns Hopkins this spring did so with what the school refers to as “general honors” by achieving a GPA of at least 3.5. A decade ago, nearly 46% did.
.. Most elite schools cap the share of the graduating class that can receive academic honors. But the caps vary widely, from 25% at Columbia University to up to 60% at Harvard.
Harvard’s number hit 91% in 2001
.. Northwestern University expanded its pool of eligible seniors to 25% from 16% in 2010, citing concern that students were losing out on graduate-school admissions because they were competing against peers at more magnanimous colleges.
.. Stanford University’s Knight-Hennessy Scholars graduate program, said application readers may glance at honors designations, but don’t dwell on them. He said the program—which received 3,601 applications for 50 spots this year—looks more for candidates who challenge themselves academically, even if that means a B grade along the way.