But many departments have warned their students that they think the College might not accept up to half of their recommendations. History told its students that roughly half of their concentrators recommended last May for magna would have received the degree cum laude under the new regulations, and half those recommended for cum laude would have received no honors at all.

Bernstein also says that social studies expects only two-thirds of its students to receive the recommended level of honors.

A student’s transcript will include the department’s recommendation as well as the honors the College awards.

Students say they wish the College did not have to rely on percentage cutoffs to award Latin honors.

“I despise percentage rankings. We should be rewarding people for what they’re doing, not punishing them,” says Harrison L. Jackson ’05, a history and literature concentrator.

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE...

The stricter rules, as well as confusion over their precise effects, have led a few students to decide not to go through the thesis writing process.

While some seniors decide to drop their theses every year, some say the honors transition was a significant factor in their decision this year.

“I was planning on writing a thesis when I came back in the fall, but was unsure because of different stories I had heard about the honors changes,” says one senior government concentrator.

The senior, who wished to remain anonymous to avoid being penalized for criticizing her department, says she chose not to write a thesis because writing one would not guarantee her honors.

“I didn’t want to venture into that possibility of engaging in this full-year-long project without knowing what was going to happen,” she says. “As a student here who’s about to graduate, I feel like I’m owed at least some type of consistent explanation of how my work is going to be evaluated.”

Head tutors in psychology and biology say they have not noticed a decrease in the number of students writing theses as a result of the change in requirements. But Pierce Professor of Psychology and Head Tutor in Psychology Ken Nakayama says it may be too early to tell.

“I suspect that this will happen with the new college rules,” he says.

And while students say they are still confused by the rules, head tutors for several concentrations say that they have kept students informed of the changes in honors policies.

Nakayama says that the department is in the process of explaining the new honors rules to concentrators. And Bernstein says she has already done the same at meetings for thesis students.