Talk:Latin honors

message: So what proportion of graduates achieve summa, magna etc? It'd be nice to have more information in this article. ZephyrAnycon 21:32, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Each university has different standards. It varies (often a great deal) between different universities. —Lowellian (reply) 07:05, 2 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Proportion of graduates receiving honors

message: Answers.com has this article almost word for word.  Just figured I would point that out in case it is of concern.  Answers.com article —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.88.180.182 (talk • contribs) 01:36, 28 April 2006
:Answers.com is a known wiki mirror. Their article is copied from here. Millancad 00:55, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Answers.com

message: Can any academic who has worked in both the US and UK explain the relation between Latin honours and the British system of 1st, 2:1, 2:2 and 3rd? Adambisset 11:30, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is more rigorous, actually. At least in many of the traditional universities. As a person who has marked papers at Newcastle University, I can tell you that the marking scheme in the UK is such that you mark upwards or downwards from 50%, and the scheme does not even go beyond 70-79%. i.e. in the British system 70%-79% is typically considered the highest grade if one has mastered all the relevant course material to perfection. Only exceptional students who seep originality out of every pore are typically given anything above. There are exceptions where some universities use a more American scheme. I am not sure, but I think Warwick does. In the US on the other hand a person gets marked down from 100%, so the full range of marks get used. 
A First Class at a good university also means you're pretty much guaranteed any PhD at a top university. One engineering job posting I saw was particular telling. Intel asked for a microelectronics engineer with either a) a First Class Honours for a BEng(Honours) Electrical & Electronic  Engineering with a strong Microelectronics component, OR b) PhD in Microelectronics. I doubt you'll find a similar offer for an American graduate where the standard engineering programmes do not have similar depth.
The reason for the difference in the UK and USA is probably this: In the British education system we specialise early (through O Levels and A Levels). Then in university we intensely study a particular field. In the UK, non-honours degrees are 2 years, studying more general topics and they  are no longer awarded in England. Honours degrees are 3 years. Only a student getting worse than 3rd class grades will end up with a non-honours degree. In the USA a 4 year degree is typically non-honours, however the top graduating class are said to 'graduate with honours'. Contrast this with the UK where the degree itself is an honours degree and only those who do very poorly are not awarded their honours (i.e. it becomes equivalent to a 2 year non-honours degree). 
Comparing the Oxbridge requirements for US students doesn't really help because UK universities typically have lower requirements (or more flexible requirements) for foreign students as opposed to students in the British education system, i.e. they are more lax with foreigners. I also know many students at good UK universities who got First Class degrees and had their pick when it came to fully-funded PhD programmes at the Ivy League or MIT, stateside. Consider also that a 2:1 is usually sufficient to get directly into most PhD programmes in the UK. Consider also that in the UK you don't mess around for a few years in the PhD - as soon as you enrol you're actively engaged in research and usually publish in 2-3 years. Usually a minimum of a 2:2 is required for a Master's. I am talking about the demanding courses like engineering, physics, mathematics as I don't have experience with the other fields. 
I think First = Summa Cum Laude, 2:1 = Magna cum Laude, 2:2 = cum Laude could be an accurate comparison. However, the systems are very different so making comparisons in the first place might be a mistake.
Rlinfinity (talk) 23:02, 10 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Relation to the British system

message: I re-tagged the article, hoping for more and better references to be introduced. We should work to avoid any "self-evident facts". —KNcyu38 (talk • contribs) 13:56, 14 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: re-tagging the article as unreferenced

message: The "Spam filters" section is interesting, but is it really relevant to Latin honors per se? Should a similar cautionary note be added to every other article with "cum" in the title? Decagon 05:54, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spam filters 

message: I don't know how many High Schools award graduates, but I just returned from the Niceville High School Commencement in Florida. Approx 20% of their graduates were awarded Summa Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, or Cum Laude, complete with differently colored "sashes?" over their gowns.—Preceding unsigned comment added by  69.181.131.62 (talk) 09:14, 19 May 2007
* At Niceville? I hafta admit, that is pretty nice!--Jerzy•t 02:46, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Also used by high schools 

message: One of Fordham University’s student newspapers translated this as “with hysterical praise,” and so the university dropped the distinction and awards such degrees with summa honors, and a notation In cursu honorum, “in the honors course.” This latter notation is used by some other schools as well.
Anyone have a source for this? All I can find are ones that seem to come from this article.--Insomniac By Choice (talk) 22:11, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hysterical praise 

message: I just noticed that you write, that in Germany, "these degrees are mostly used when a doctorate is conferred, not for diplomas and the newly introduced bachelor and master degrees." 
This is wrong, as it has in fact been used for diplomas. I just got mine, so I know this info first-hand ;-)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.68.188.220 (talk) 14:45, 24 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wrong information on Germany 

message: I find, as an example of bad organization, 
: The Finnish Matriculation Examinations at the end of high school equivalent lukio uses the grades of improbatur (I, failing; "not accepted"), approbatur (A; "accepted"), lubenter approbatur (B; "willingly accepted"), cum laude approbatur (C; "accepted with praise"), magna cum laude approbatur (M; "accepted with great praise"), eximia cum laude approbatur (E; "accepted with excellent praise") and laudatur (L; "praised"). Finnish universities, when grading Master's theses and Doctoral dissertations, use the same scale with the addition of the grade of non sine laude approbatur (N; "not without praise accepted") between lubenter and cum laude.
which is damn near unusable. I was interested in the ranking of the honors, but how could anyone be expected to use the material from the article without recasting it? E.g., so:
: Finnish universities grade Master's theses and Doctoral dissertations as follows:
:* improbatur (I, failing; "not accepted")
:* approbatur (A; "accepted"), 
:* lubenter approbatur (B; "willingly accepted"), 
:* non sine laude approbatur (N; "not without praise accepted")
:* cum laude approbatur (C; "accepted with praise"), 
:* magna cum laude approbatur (M; "accepted with great praise"), 
:* eximia cum laude approbatur (E; "accepted with excellent praise") and 
:* laudatur (L; "praised"). 
: The Finnish Matriculation Examinations at the end of the lukio (equivalent to high school) use all of these, with the exception of N (italicized above).
This would be worthwhile, if only bcz it makes manifest the inconsistent style of translation, but in my case, it lets one count to find that third- and fourth-class honors  are called magna cum laude and cum laude respectively.  Hopefully those with more time for the subject than i will be inspired to use this style, or something a bit better, throughout the accompanying article.--Jerzy•t 06:26, 17 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Organization  

message: Honoris causae redirects here, but "Honoris causa" redirects to the Wikipedia article Honorary degrees. There should be mention made of honoris causae, with a link to the proper article.BlueMesa171 (talk) 02:51, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Honoris causae 

message: The named distinctions are correct, the percentages needed for those distinctions differ from university to university, within a university and even to a small extend from year to year (same for schools) and are for Leuven roughly 70%, 75%, 80% and 90%. Also important: the facuties do not only consider the grades but also take into account whether or not the grades have been earned on the ´first` (not attended) attempt or the second attempt of the examination since many students had the habit to deliberately not attend a few subject at the end of the academic year so they could get higher grades. 
For most subjects at universities it's not possible to get more than 90% (you need to show a greater knowledge and/or insight than can be obtained with the mandatory studymaterial, the philosophy behind this is that only the professor himself can get a perfect score) which is why only a very small percentage of students receive the highest distinction (felicitaties = congratulations; 1% is a good estimation) since you need to get the highest possible score for each examination. To receive the second highest distinction you need to score for the average examination 1/20th point lower than what is needed to earn the highest distinction 
since in Belgium they use a discrete scale from 1 to 20. 
For the other distinctions it strongly depends on the study and the faculty what percentages of the students get what distinctions. For medicine, which uses a somewhat challenging entrance exam, for example roughly 20% gets high distinction, for engineering (burgelijk ingenieur), for law school and applied economic studies also a large percentage of the students get high distinction (companies strongly select on those grades), for engineering that percentage is a lot lower.
In conclusion: the percentages of student which receive a certain distinction should be deleted, the percentages which are needed to get one of those distinctions should be edited whith the notion that these apply to a specific university in a specific year.
82.170.40.166 (talk) 03:20, 29 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Belgium numbers are incorrect 

message: insigni cum laude (with decorated honors) is not a German grade, but instead a SWISS grade. In Germany grades are instead summa cum laude, magna cum laude, cum laude and rite. While specific schools are free to divert from the rules, German statistical office ("Statistisches Bundesamt") has defined magna cum laude as "1.0", cum laude as "2.0" and rite as "3.0". The additional best grade summa cum laude, is considered to be better than "0.5". As normally students cannot exceed the 1.0 grade, this "0.5" is reserved asa special doctoral level grade for absolutely outstanding work.
In any case there is no insigni cum laude which is why I deleted from the article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.2.167.4 (talk) 22:33, 15 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  German grades were incorrect 

message: At #Types, it says:
:A rarely used distinction, maxima cum laude, "with very great honor", is an intermediary honor between the summa and the magna honors. It is sometimes used when the summa honor is reserved only for students with a perfect academic record (4.0 / 4.0 GPA).
Maxima means "greatest", not "very great". I don't know if the description that follows it is correct, either, since it would seem that maxima should be higher than all others. Right? —[AlanM1(talk)]— 03:30, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maxima cum laude 

message: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_Laude is a redirect to this page but it seems somebody has created another page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cum_laude, the other page is 3 small sentences and provides no information that isn't present here. I presume it should be deleted but I'm new to wiki and have no idea how to go about it. mycorrhizal.network (talk) 03:01, 2 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wiki page duplication 

message: In the Belgium section, we are told the French and Dutch translations of the Latin honours. That's strange, because this is the English Wikipedia. If the French and Dutch phrases are used in Belgium, the article should say that. Buster79 (talk) 22:02, 27 September 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Beligum: why translate into French and Dutch? 

message: Seriously? People who need Wikipedia Pronunciation Respelling will not come to this article or those of related subjects. ♆ CUSH ♆ 19:16, 21 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikipedia Pronunciation Respelling? 

message: As the entire article shows, the percentages and requirements for the different honours vary wildly from country to country. Therefore it was wrong and misleading to give "typical percentages" in the lead, as these would only be typical for certain countries, and far too high for many. EDIT: second section, not lead section. My bad. Fgf10 (talk) 16:39, 25 June 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your edit! I think it was unnecessary to remove the percentages altogether, though--a quantitative referential point for each of the honors was extremely helpful, and I've added some qualifications to address your concerns. The North American standard, I think, is particularly notable because it is uniquely prevalent and uniformly used across almost all universities in Canada and the U.S. Ravenclaw0127 (talk) 02:52, 27 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed percentages from lead 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: As a country where the lingua franca is English, shouldn't Singapore be grouped together with the English speaking countries on top of the article, i.e. North America and the UK?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by ArticCynda (talk • contribs) 11:36, 25 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Classification of Singapore