With the College planning to award honors to a third fewer graduates this June, seniors may have to adjust to having one fewer title for their resumes.

Some seniors say they are frustrated that they are the first to feel the squeeze and say they wish they had been notified of the changes earlier.

“What is problematic is that the current junior and senior classes applied to these concentrations under the assumption that they would not be subjected to a quota system to determine their distinction, that they would graduate with the honors merited by their thesis and grades,” Megan G. Cameron ’05, a social studies concentrator, writes in an e-mail.

“I don’t disagree fundamentally with the policy; it’s simply frustrating to think that if I had only come to Harvard a year earlier and written the exact same thesis I plan on writing now, there’s a chance that my diploma might have been a bit more impressive.”

This fall, the College released a brochure detailing the changes, which cap at 60 percent the number of members of the Class of 2005 who will receive honors. The change follows a Faculty vote two years ago to reign in the number of honors graduates, which exceeded 90 percent of the class in 2004.

Under the new system, departments will continue to recommend honors candidates, who will be subject to much stricter College-wide GPA cutoffs.

While Faculty members say the new policy is appropriate, and many students agree that honors inflation existed, both sides say it will take time for students to adjust their expectations.

“Many of our seniors are upset by the new system, in part because they realize that they would not have been subjected to it if they had been born a year earlier,” Anya Bernstein, director of undergraduate studies for social studies, writes in an e-mail. “[While] I personally support the change in honors, as I think honors do not mean as much when more than 90 percent of the students receive them, I do...feel for this group of students.”

MAKING THE CUTOFF

Under the new honors system, students will still receive English honors for work completed in their concentrations, but a third fewer students will receive the Latin honors that recognize overall academic performance.

Around five percent of the members of the graduating class who have been recommended for highest honors in their concentrations will receive summa cum laude degrees, the same cap from previous years. Students whose concentration recommends them for high honors will be awarded magna cum laude degrees, bringing the total number of summa and magna degrees to no more than 20 percent.

Another 30 percent of seniors who have been recommended for concentration honors will graduate cum laude.

No more than 10 percent of students with high GPAs who are not recommended by their concentration for honors may also receive cum laude degrees.

Departments’ standards for recommending students for honors vary widely.

History sets the minimum GPA requirement for summa around 3.8 and for magna around 3.5. In psychology, only students who have A or A- GPAs and write magna or summa theses can earn highest honors.