Phi Beta Kappa inducts 73
Just over 70 high-achieving upperclassmen — 61 seniors and 12 juniors — were inducted into the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa on Monday.
The inducted seniors represent the top 5 percent of their class, while the juniors represent the top 1 percent of their class. Students are generally elected to the Yale chapter based on the percentage of their grades that are A or higher, according the Yale Phi Beta Kappa Web site.
“The idea is to pick a handful of the really distinguished scholars with a consistently high average in a number of different fields,” said East Asian...
What are the guidelines for election to Phi Beta Kappa? Simply based on number of A's? Are A-'s worth the same as A's? What if someone has a lot of B's but also a lot of A's because he took, say, 6 credits each semester?
depends of class year of inductee, but it's percent of A's, not raw number, and A- don't count (i think)
sick fraternity. those dudes know how to party.
Yale's guidelines for election to Phi Beta Kappa have always seemed overly concerned with GPA to me. Not even GPA, actually - purely the number of A's gained by the student. Other schools such UPenn and Harvard carefully consider not only GPA (often separated into different concentrations) but also confidential recommendations from faculty members. A well-considered system like this would, to me, make membership in PBK somewhat more of an honor. This is in no way to disparage the accomplishments of the inductees (I myself was one several years ago). Wouldn't it be better to examine the actual intellectual accomplishments of the students, however, rather than rewarding the mathematical accumulation of A's?