Word: summas
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Last year, more than half (56 percent) of the nine chemistry and physics concentrators graduated summa cum laude; 40 percent of the 10 linguistics concentrators did; and 22 percent of the nine concentrators in women's studies did. Meanwhile, large departments like economics or government hover around the more selective two percent range...
...number of students per concentration who receive summa degrees varies widely as well, with smaller departments tending to award a higher percentage of their graduates the degree...
Bert R. Vaux, a lecturer on linguistics, explains the reasons for the high number of summa awards in his department. A qualifying thesis must be "highly original work to the quality level of a [master's] thesis, and it also has to be well-done technically speaking," he says...
...interesting because the [Biology] Department coordinator...told me that a lot of times the people that do want to get a summa and are really fixated on it usually don't," Lee says...
With the great variation in the determination of honors distinctions and the layers of bureaucracy surrounding recommendations in the last days before Commencement, some seniors--even those nominated for the summa degree--express some dissatisfaction with how it all worked...