"Summa cum laude" is the highest honor a graduate can receive. A summa from Harvard is one of the most impressive and coveted titles of all, making the achievement of such an honor hard to come by.

So when 115 seniors--36 more than the year before--received this distinction last year, Faculty members began to worry that "summa inflation" was on the rise.

The unusual number of summas followed closely on the heels of changes in the government, history and economics departments--three of the College's largest departments. Both the government and history departments abolished general exams, and the economics department established a non-thesis cum laude track.

Concerned about what appeared to be summa inflation, the Faculty voted in several new changes this year.

As a result of the Faculty vote, elective grades will now count as part of the summa consideration.

Secondly, guidelines were set to keep summa requirements to 4 to 5 percent of all degree candidates. Last year, the summa degrees were awarded to about 7 percent of the graduating class.

"The 5 percent reflects the strong Faculty consensus that that is about the right fraction for the class as a whole," Dean of Undergraduate Education David Pilbeam wrote in an e-mail message.

Pilbeam adds that he hoped that the stricter attention to the percentage of summas would also filter down to the recommendations for magna and cum laude degrees.

Stricter Guidelines

Many key departmental administrators admit that they are being stricter this year in recommending summas.

In the past, "I inherited the policy that any student with a 14.0 [GPA] or above would be recommended," says James E. Davis, the head tutor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology.

Last year, the chemistry department awarded 18 summas; this year, it recommended four, Davis says.

"I'm sure there are disappointed people with grade point averages above 14.0. But it wouldn't be fair for as to give 18 summas when other departments give two or three," Davis says. "But there was such a big gap between the four [who were recommended] and the rest. It was an unanimous decision."

Honors inflation is closely related to grade inflation, Pilbeam says. (See story, page B-11).

"We noticed in our departmental deliberations that when we looked at our written criteria for honors--high honors and highest honors--we didn't really have many students [who] we thought were truly excellent, although many of them had excellent grades," Pilbeam says.