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WotD: Summa cum laude
OK, boys and girls, it’s time to back to Latin class for Summa cum laude.
If you want to speak a more sophisticated level of English, you need to know some commonly used Latin terms and abbreviations.
No, you don’t need to speak Latin.
However, when learning English, you learn a little piece of every language in the world.
Today we’ll be talking about Latin honours bestowed on university graduates in the States.
Of course, the awarding of honours depends on the university attended.
Here is a general description of the top three Latin honours of distinction at US universities.
The lowest one is cum laude and is awarded to students who graduate in the top 20% to 30% of their class.
Cum laude means with praise.
Next, we have the second-highest honour level – magna cum laude.
This honour is given to graduates in the top 10-15 percent of their class.
The highest Latin honours a university can bestow on a graduate is summa cum laude, which means with the highest praise.
Very few people graduate summa cum laude.
Some universities do not bestow this level of honours at all.
To graduate summa cum laude from an American university, you must be in the top 1 to 5 percent.
You’ll be a genius who mastered pretty much everything you were exposed to at university.
It’s important to remember that bestowing honours of distinction is done at the university’s discretion.
Some universities will write it directly on the diploma, while others only put it on the transcript or official record of marks.
It is a very nice honour, though, to graduate from your university and be awarded either cum laude, magna cum laude or summa cum laude.
Flesch-Kincaid Readability Test
This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).
On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 63.
The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.