Word: summa
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Born in Camden, N.J., she received her B.A. from Wheaton College summa cum laude and her M.D. from the Johns Hopkins Medical School...
...really concrete things will come out of Harvard's Office of Instructional Research since it now collects the same information on women as on men," she explained. "We have stopped asking questions just about Radcliffe students: it doesn't help us to know how many women graduated magna or summa unless we know how many men did the same...
...most departments, a late thesis means a penalty of one full distinction. A Social Studies thesis--more than a month overdue--which received a summa minus was dropped down to a magna plus. Few undergraduates complain about penalties for extremely late theses, although there is always annual speculation about what might happen if a student misses his 5 p.m. deadline by 12 minutes...
...academic rat race continues, and as long as the departments stress the thesis so heavily, undergraduates will strive to beat the deadlines, to write the summa paper, to make their Who's Who's listing more impressive. Although the thesis only counts one-third toward the degree award in most departments, an inordinate amount of importance has been placed on its quality. As a result, undergraduates have become increasingly aware of the inequities of a system that can probably never be equitable, and the cries of anguish have grown louder in recent years...
...where does it all get you? Into the little summa section in the Tercentary Theatre and a one-line insertion in Who's Who. But that's about it. Even the personal pride--the only reason to work so hard and so long for the summa distinction--gets lost somewhere between that first reading and that third reading...