Honors in English
The Path Towards Honors: A General Roadmap | Honors Application
Form (.doc)
We encourage interested students to pursue Honors in English. Students must have achieved a 3.5 average in English and a 3.5 average overall in order to receive Honors in English. (Please note: if you do not confidently anticipate such an average, you should not apply for Honors.) Naturally, all Honors Students must satisfy all the requirements for a regular English major with the following additional requirements: they must take nine English courses at the 300-level or higher (instead of the usual eight), one of which must be L14 398, the Junior Honors Seminar. The seminar aims to cultivate the intellectual habits and skills required for a successful honors degree, and it should be taken in the fall or spring of the junior year. Candidates who will be studying abroad must consult the Director of Honors before departure.
There are two tracks for completing the Honors program—by thesis or by coursework. To apply for Honors candidacy in either case, students must submit a writing sample (an essay of no fewer than eight pages in length written in a previous English literature course) and an application form. Students must also ask two English literature instructors to write recommendations on their behalf, to be emailed directly to Kathy Schneider, the Academic Coordinator in English. All application materials must be submitted to Kathy Schneider by the end of April in the student’s junior year. The department’s Undergraduate Committee and Director of Honors will review applications in May, and students will be notified of the outcome by the middle of June.
Please contact Rafia Zafar, the department’s Director of Honors, if you have any questions.
The following requirements apply to the individual Honors tracks:
Honors by Thesis
In April of their junior year, students wishing to undertake a sustained research project of 50-70 pages in length must first find a potential thesis advisor and in consultation with the advisor develop a thesis proposal (one to two pages) in which they describe the nature of the project. This proposal will be submitted in April along with the other application materials outlined above, and the director’s signature on the application form will be taken to indicate his or her support for the project and willingness to undertake its supervision. Students whose applications to the program have been successful should begin their reading and research over the summer, and will enroll during each semester of their senior year for three units of L14 5001, Honors Thesis Tutorial, in which they will work with their thesis advisor towards the successful completion of a 50-70 page thesis by the end of February of the senior year. If, in the course of the fall semester, the thesis director is unable to predict with confidence that the thesis will satisfactorily be completed, the project may be terminated at the end of the fall semester with the possible award of three units in recognition of the work accomplished during the fall. A completed draft of the thesis must be submitted to the thesis advisor by mid-January, and three copies of the completed thesis must be submitted to the Academic Coordinator by the end of February. An oral examination based primarily on the thesis will be taken in March (ordinarily just after spring break), with an examining committee of three faculty members, including the thesis director.Honors by Coursework
Candidates for honors by coursework must complete two courses at the 400-level in addition to the two 400-level courses required for all majors. Of the two pre-1700 courses required of all majors, at least one must be at the 400-level. Students interested in pursuing honors by coursework must submit an application by the end of April of their junior year, as described above. Following a review of their application materials and their spring semester grades by the Undergraduate Committee and the Director of Honors, they will be notified of their status in June. In preparation for the final submission of written work in their senior year, students will select, revise, and extend two of their coursework essays. In mid-January of their senior year, they will submit these revised essays for additional feedback to the faculty members who initially graded them. The final revised papers should be no shorter than fifteen pages each, and must be submitted at the end of February, along with an abstract of your coursework (title, number, instructor), and an essay (3-4 pages in length) discussing the aims and methods of the two long papers, and how they relate to the student’s upper-division work as a whole. These materials will form the basis for an oral exam to be conducted by three faculty members in March, typically after spring break.
Please consult The Path Towards Honors: A General Roadmap for approximate deadlines.
Determination of Level of Honors
The examining committee will recommend the appropriate level of honors based on the following considerations:
- The College of Arts and Sciences GPA standards for Latin Honors
- The quality of the thesis or coursework papers submitted
- The student's performance in the oral exam
- The breadth of learning and accomplishment evidenced in the student's course choices and performances.
Students should note that the final decision on the level of honors lies with the Dean of the College; the department merely recommends a level. At present the minimum GPAs for Latin Honors are: 3.5 for cum laude; 3.65 for magna cum laude; 3.8 for summa cum laude. The award of College Honors by Arts and Sciences does not require a departmental recommendation and is given on the basis of a 3.5 GPA.