Earning Honors

Brown awards two kinds of honors. The university awards Magna cum laude based on grades. The Computer Science Department awards Honors in Computer Science. This page is about the latter.

Key People

Requirements

Honors requires 2 courses of research, writing an honors thesis, and meeting certain grade-based criteria. In detail:

  1. Honors candidates must have earned A's or S-with-distinction in 2/3 of the courses used towards the concentration, excluding introductory-sequence courses (CS courses numbered below 0200) and the calculus prerequisite (unless that course is also used as an intermediate math course in CS requirements). Note that the grade requirement includes courses taken in the final year.  Thus, for example, if a student's grades drop below this bar in the last year, that student will not graduate with honors.
  2. Candidates must have completed 2/3 of their concentration courses by the start of their last two semesters. 
  3. Students must submit to a public defense of their theses to be attended by their committees and at least two other CS faculty members. Whether a student's thesis is deemed worthy of honors is decided by a combination of the advisor, reader, and faculty present at this defense. 
    • For May graduates, the presentations happen as part of the Undergrad Research Symposium, which takes place around the end of April/beginning of May (after the last day of classes). You will receive email about scheduling constraints roughly a month prior to the symposium
    • For December graduates, schedule the presentation with your advisor and reader. Provide the room and date details to the Undergrad Program Admin and the head of the Honors Program at least a week in advance (so they can announce it to the rest of the faculty)
  4. Honors candidates should register for CSCI 1970 for both semesters they are working on the thesis.
    • In order to see 1970 on CAB, you have to enable the checkbox to include "independent study and research courses". You should then be able to find your advisor's section to request the registration override.
  5. Any deviation from these rules must be approved by the head of the CS honors program (in consultation with the student's advisor).

Procedures

  1. By the end of shopping period each fall, we email all seniors a form to use to inform the department that you are pursuing honors that year. You should only be filling this out if you are in your 7th semester of study (December graduates can use the same year's form at the start of the spring semester).
  2. Candidates must choose an advisor and submit a 2-to-3 page proposal (you'll receive a form link), 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) in their 7th semesters. For May 2025 graduates, that deadline was Oct 3, 2024. If you need to sign up for honors after that, contact the head of the Honors Program.
    • The proposal should describe the research question that the student will be working on, how the project fits in either to existing results or larger projects (either within the same lab or the research community in general), and what the student hopes the research will achieve (could be anything from a new technique, a theorem, a prototype implementation of a new research idea, experimental evidence of something, etc -- your advisor will know what's appropriate for your area)
    • No particular format is required for the proposal. It should list the preliminary project title, your name, and your advisor's name. Most come in as LaTeX or Google docs saved as PDF.
  3. A ~3-page progress report must be submitted to the Undergraduate Program Admin and the head of the Honors Program within 3 weeks of the start of the final semester (Feb 12th for those graduating in May; Sept 30 for those graduating in December). 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. For joint concentrators, the reader should be in the other department from the advisor, unless the heads of Honors/Directors of Undergrad Studies for both departments agree in writing otherwise.
    • The progress report restates the research question (which may have changed or been refined -- that's fine, just explain why), describes what the student has accomplished to date, and revises the expected outcomes accordingly.
    • No particular format is required.
  4. A final draft of the thesis must be submitted to the student's committee and Undergrad Program Admin by April 18 for students completing their degrees in May and by December 1 for those completing their degrees in December.
  5. The final thesis document must be submitted by May 2nd (May graduates) or December 20 (December graduates). Please note that the department has no flexibility on the May deadline, as the University has a hard deadline for honors decisions (prior to printing diplomas).

For Joint Concentrators

Students in joint concentrations must select one of the two participating departments through which to complete the honors requirements. The honors project must be done following the rules of the selected department, with the primary advisor from that department and the reader from the other joint-concentration department. In these cases, the reader must be identified at the time the student submits the initial proposal (as per item 3 above). 

In the (rare) case that a student wishes to pursue CS honors working with a research advisor who is not in CS, the student must identify a nominal advisor in CS (who will be the advisor of record from the registrar's perspective). The nominal advisor would effectively serve as reader. All such cases must be approved by the head of the honors program for CS.