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Graduating with honors? And GPA

Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2008 7:57 pm
by Maxwells_Demon
Does anyone know the importance of graduating with "Honors" in Physics or Engineering Physics as an undergrad? I have a chance to graduate with "Honors" but I have to put more work into an Honors thesis before I graduate.

I just spoke to an advisor and he told me that when he was on the board for the grad program at my school (a well known public University), he said he didn't even see if the students graduated with Honors. But, for places like Harvard, or top ten, it might be something that gets looked at. Does anyone know about this? Basically graduating from Honors from my school is having a 3.5+ overall, taking so many honors classes, and writing an Honors thesis before graduation.
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Also, in terms of GPA, my advisor said overall GPA hardly matters and Physics gpa is most important. Are there "threshold" (or cutoff) gpa scores at the top 10 places?

thanks in advance for answering my questions, maybe it'll help others.
-Maxwell's Demon

Posted: Sat Jan 05, 2008 2:28 pm
by grae313
"Honors" means different things at different schools, so just having that on a resume doesn't mean a whole lot. If you took a lot of honors classes and wrote an honors thesis, they care about that, and want to see that on your resume. It's what you did to get the honors designation that matters, not as much the designation itself.

Physics GPA is more important, but you have to imagine in a top 10 school there are plenty of applicants with excellent all-around GPAs, and you might want to have a good GPA to compete.

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 3:18 pm
by twistor
Different advisors have different opinions and this merely reflects the fact that no one really knows how the admissions committee is going to judge your application. My advisor explained to me that overall GPA is the one of the first cuts a school makes, of course your milage may vary...

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2008 10:48 pm
by grae313
Twistor, are you referring to the 3.0 cutoff or something else? In my post I was sort of assuming like 3.3 +

Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2008 1:48 pm
by twistor
I interpreted the statement very loosely...

I figured it meant they make a lot of inferences of your ability based on your GPA, so I guess I shouldn't have used the word "cut" in the sense that it is often used on this forum.