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Brown awards two kinds of honors. The university awards Magna cum laude based on grades. The Computer Science Department awards Honors in Computer Science.
The CS Department's requirements for graduating with honors are as follows:
- Honors candidates must, in courses used for the concentration, have no Cs and a preponderance of As over Bs. No more than two concentration courses may be taken S/NC. 2/3 of their concentration courses must be completed by the start of their last two semesters. Note that the grade requirement includes courses taken in the final year. Thus, for example, if a student gets a C in a course used to satisfy a concentration requirement in the final semester, that student will not graduate with honors.
- Candidates must choose an advisor and submit a 1-to-3 page proposal, approved by the advisor (who must be a CS faculty member), to the director of undergraduate studies before the last day to register for classes (not the end of shopping period, but two weeks after that -- 10/1 in fall 2013) in their next-to-last semesters.
- A ~3-page progress report must be submitted to the director of undergraduate studies by the end of the first month of the final semester. Also at this time, the student must identify a reader, who should be either a CS faculty member or a faculty member in some other Brown department who has expertise that's relevant to the thesis topic.
- A final draft of the thesis must be submitted to the student's committee and the director of undergraduate studies by April 15 for students completing their degrees in May and by December 1 for those completing their degrees in December.
- Students must submit to a public defense of their theses to be attended by their committees and at least two other CS faculty members, one of whom is normally the director of undergraduate studies. Whether a student's thesis is deemed worthy of honors is decided by the faculty present at this defense.
- Honors candidates should register for CSCI 1970 for both semesters they are working on the thesis.
- Any deviation from these rules must be approved by the director of undergraduate studies, in consultation with the student's advisor.
