What goes into the “H” on your transcript

By: Catie Kean ‘20 and Sophie Feldman ‘20

As student inboxes flood with messages from teachers and administrators, course forecasting weighs heavy on the docket. Students must make difficult choices; whether to take a language or a history course, to enroll in five, six, or even seven classes, they must contend with fulfilling graduation requirements and facing pressures to challenge themselves.

Of the courses listed on this year's catalog, 28 of 100 are advertised as “honors.” Because Catlin Gabel School (CGS) does not offer AP or IB curriculum, honors classes are one of the only ways to demonstrate additional academic rigor. However, the criteria for what qualifies as an honors class and the terminology itself is often unclear. Between the “accelerated,” “advanced,” and “honors,” marks on student transcripts, it’s hard to distinguish what each label signifies. Essentially, they’re all the same.

CGS has recently reevaluated its curriculum and decided to standardize its terminology to make things more clear for colleges. The department chairs went through the classifications of honors courses to streamline their taxonomy; “Advanced Biology,” for example, will undergo a name change to “Honors Biology.”

As department chairs revised their terminology, they have also been faced with determining what makes a course “honors” after all.

Co-Director of College Counseling Bill Ouellette noted that “an honors [course] would come with the expectation that a student is ready, willing, able, and interested in going deeper into a subject.” He pointed towards a fluency in the topic and display of self-directedness as defining characteristics of honors students.

Academic Dean Derek Kanerek, who works closely with department chairs to create a common philosophy among courses, gave his perspective on honors courses via email.

“Honors courses in the Catlin Gabel Upper School have some common characteristics in their design and the work that students are required to complete in order to succeed,” said Kanarek. “Students in these classes are expected to work with greater independence and resilience, persevering through challenges and applying their learning to novel situations. Typically, these courses meet or exceed the academic rigor and depth of college-level courses (or more commonly in the high school setting, Advanced Placement courses) in the discipline.”

While this framework successfully defines what honors courses share and what students are expected to contribute, it fails to provide any precise criteria. A course that assigns less than thirty minutes of work per night might be honors, while one which assigns over an hour may not be. There is often confusion among students given these blurred boundaries.

This ambiguity has also left many members of the student body feeling certain classes should be recognized as honors for their difficulty. For example, students often say that United States History and English 11 are some of the hardest classes at CGS. However, these courses are not honors.

“Since freshman year, I had been hearing about how junior year at Catlin is the most difficult, and the primary reason for this was the combination of U.S. History and Junior English. After completing both courses, I can confirm that the workload for each far exceeds that of any other Catlin courses I have taken,” said senior Nina Hunter.

This issue has become more controversial following the introduction of American Studies, a double-block dual history and English credit.

“When you are choosing between American Studies and Junior English and U.S. History, and you choose Junior English and U.S. History, [some students think] you’re selecting the harder classes. I think it would make sense to have them be honors because they are very academically rigorous,” said junior Katherine Chang.

Another area in which students often seek clarification is with the honors designation policy across departments. In the English and history departments, all elective courses receive an honors designation; however, no semester-long science courses are honors.

The science department has a spreadsheet which ranks the expectations of science courses, yet electives ranked “low” and “high” in workload will often appear the same on a transcript, as non-honors. The science department seems to be ahead of the curve in defining expectations with the newly released Honors Science Course Criteria document. However, they must revise these expectations to include electives if they are especially challenging.

“Certain science electives, specifically Experimental Chemistry, should be honors classes. On average, I spent over an hour on homework per night,” explained senior Amy Chen.

Another common critique of the current system is that the difficulty of a course depends on the teacher rather than the material.

“It is well known that oftentimes, the same classes with different teachers have wildly varying difficulty,” said Chen.

But why so focused on that little “H”? As CGS students, we are asked to emphasize the joy and pursuit of learning in our education.

Looking at past forecasting experiences, Chang recalled, “I wanted to challenge myself, and I wanted my transcript to look like I was challenging myself.

Sophomore Mike Hart also sees great value in having a transcript which demonstrates a challenging workload. “If I’m interested equally in two classes and one has an ‘H’ next to it, I will definitely take the honors class,” he said.

As a Palma Scholar, Hart does not have graduation requirements. This allows him to have a greater degree of flexibility with course forecasting and accumulate more honors credits than many of his peers. The one caveat is that he must take the Palma Seminar for three years and complete a capstone project senior year. However, these courses offer an honors credit. In contrast, most required courses for typical students do not result in honors credits.

“Catlin students welcome challenges--that’s why we’re here--but to have a course with an extensive workload appear not especially rigorous on a transcript is a disservice. It puts us at a disadvantage,” said Chen.

College counselors Bill Ouellete and Blythe Butler send out a profile and a transcript to colleges on behalf of their students each application season.

When a college looks at a transcript in the admissions process, they are “trying to evaluate whether a student has demonstrated an ability to persist through difficulty, a testament that the student is able to handle college-level work,” said Ouellette.

Honors credits are a measure of that persistence.

According to The New York Times, "generally, nothing carries more weight in admissions than grades (plus strength of the high school curriculum) and ACT/SAT scores. With limited time and resources, those metrics offer a relatively quick way to predict who will succeed."

CGS has a responsibility towards its students to set them up well for the college admissions process, giving them the best chance of success among a field of qualified applicants.

The clarification in course terminology by department chairs will simplify that process next year, but a comprehensive evaluation of honors course criteria with specific workload requirements needs to be the next stride forward. Students should be able to see which teachers are teaching their courses so they are able to make an informed decision, and if homework exceeds a certain threshold of time on average, it should be qualified as honors. Student voices are paramount in this process. Though the administration may have their own ideas about what constitutes course difficulty, no one is a better judge of this than the student body.

Honors courses are designed to acknowledge and celebrate rigorous student work, and improving this system will help the school achieve those goals by supporting its hard-working student body.