GRADUATION: The Year-end Awards & Grading

This information is for M.S. Students primarily.

We received the following question from a student:

Today in REPORTING, we had a guest speaker whose bio mentioned that she received the “Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship, won for graduating first in her class…”

Since we don’t receive grades, I’m wondering how this designation of “first in class” is decided.

Good question. Here’s the answer:

The Journalism School has a Pass-Fail system of formal grading. It aims at encouraging students to perform as well as they can, without competing with classmates. In most courses, students receive written evaluations of their work from the instructors. Copies of these evaluations are kept in the DOS Office. As part of that evaluation process, we use an informal system of additional grading, which permits each instructor to designate one or two students as having completed a course “with honors.” Students are informed of the honors designation via the written evaluation form.

That designation, in the individual classes, is “honors in class,” and you will see it – if you get it – in the written evaluation form you receive (It will not appear on your official transcript). If you receive two or more “honors in class” in our six-credit courses (Reporting, Master’s Project, S&P 1, S&P 2) AND one or more in a three-credit module (Written Word, Image & Sound, Audience & Engagement), you will “graduate with honors.” 

At graduation, the honors list is announced, recognizing students for superior performance in multiple courses; the faculty determines the honors based on the number of honors-in-class designations. The faculty also awards more than a dozen special prizes at graduation, including five Pulitzer Traveling Fellowships for overall performance during the academic year.

Except for a few prizes for which students can submit stories to be judged, the rest of the prizes are decided by faculty, without input from the students.

We hold briefing sessions close to Graduation to explain the procedures.

Part-time students are eligible for the awards and are tracked during their entire academic career here (though the prizes are typically given out the year they graduate).

Please direct all questions to Dean Huff – mgh2@columbia.edu.