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. 

M.S. and M.S. Data Journalism Instructors have the option to pick one honors-in-class designation for every eight students or portion thereof enrolled in a given class. This means that for a standard 16-person class, two honors-in-class designations can be awarded for exemplary performance. This is not a grade and will not appear on a student’s transcript. Students are notified of the designation by the professor who awarded it via the written evaluation.  

The cumulative number of honors-in-class designations is used to determine who graduates with honors.  This will be noted on the graduate’s final transcript.

Honors are weighted according to the credit value of the class.  For a six-credit class, honors-in-class equals six honors credits.  For a three-credit class, it equals three honors credits, and so forth.

Master of Science in Journalism students who received 15 or more honors credits will graduate with honors.  Master of Science in Data Journalism students – who must take more classes – receiving 18 or more honors credits will graduate with honors.

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.