Those nominees who are approved by the Faculty receive a summa degree; those who "cascade down," that is, receive lower honors than those which their department recommended, still receive recognition for the recommendation. For example, a student might receive magna with highest honors as opposed to magna with high honors, the standard wording.

Rates of cascading down vary. Metrick says economics nominees are not cascaded down.

"It never happens," he says. "We are far tougher than the College with respect to summa."

But Ty, a biology and anthropology concentrator who was recommended for highest honors by both departments for her Hoopes Prizewining thesis, says she is unlikely to receive a summa degree.

"I'm pretty sure [that I won't]," she says, "because my general grade point average is not high enough."

The Numbers

The number of students per concentration who receive summa degrees varies widely as well, with smaller departments tending to award a higher percentage of their graduates the degree.

Last year, more than half (56 percent) of the nine chemistry and physics concentrators graduated summa cum laude; 40 percent of the 10 linguistics concentrators did; and 22 percent of the nine concentrators in women's studies did. Meanwhile, large departments like economics or government hover around the more selective two percent range.

Bert R. Vaux, a lecturer on linguistics, explains the reasons for the high number of summa awards in his department. A qualifying thesis must be "highly original work to the quality level of a [master's] thesis, and it also has to be well-done technically speaking," he says.

"I would say that our department is a special case," Vaux says. "In the success-driven world of Harvard undergraduates, only a very special class of people will go into linguistics, where you're unlikely to get a job. So we get high-caliber students, so that might have something to do with the excessively high number of summas we give."

What It All Means

Most of this year's candidates, despite their record of high grades, still express surprise about their nominations.

"It's too rare to be something you can be realistically shooting for all the time," says Huang. "I think every stop along the way you try to do the best you can."

"It was interesting because the [Biology] Department coordinator...told me that a lot of times the people that do want to get a summa and are really fixated on it usually don't," Lee says.

Lee tells the story of one senior who refused to donate to the Senior Gift after his department recommended him for high honors rather than highest honors.