I have made the Dean’s list every semester that I’ve been at Monmouth; until now. I’m not trying to be a crybaby and whine that I didn’t make the school’s most selective list this semester, but I’ve heard from multiple other students that they also didn’t make the list, even when they improved academically.
I asked multiple of my friends about this phenomenon, and lo and behold, many of my friends, some even with 4.0 GPAs, did not earn their spot on the Dean’s List. It seemed easy for many last year, but with an influx of new students and a shake-up with harder classes as we progress into our college careers, the list has gotten harder to achieve.
This still didn’t answer the question that I went into my investigation with, though. My GPA increased by a few points from the spring semester, and I made the Dean’s List last semester. I simply cannot understand how such a remarkable improvement in my academic achievements gets me knocked from the list I’ve strived to make since I enrolled at Monmouth.
When looking deeper and deeper into this, I realized that we are one of the only schools to select the Dean’s List the way we do. Many colleges choose their Dean’s List based on the most generic and universally recognized criteria; GPA requirements. Schools, like Rutgers University, TCNJ, Rowan University, and Montclair State University, choose their Dean’s List based on students who earn above a certain grade point average, usually 3.5. Many high schools also select their Dean’s List this way, and overall, it makes the school look better. The list, while it is less selective, is more fair to those who have worked hard to earn good grades and reward them.
The list also makes the school look better, because if the list of awardees is bigger, the school looks like it is better academically than some of its competitors.
However, Monmouth selects their Dean’s List a different way, making it virtually impossible to earn Dean’s List even if you have worked outstandingly hard and achieved a nearly perfect GPA. In addition to requiring awardees to have a 3.3 GPA, the school chooses students who are in the top 20% of their major to receive the award. For example, if your major has only 100 students in it and you earned a 3.9 GPA, only 10 students will be picked, so there is a strong possibility you will not be making Dean’s List with a nearly perfect GPA.
I could only find two other schools who base Dean’s List on the top percentages, Bernard College and Stony Brook University, and they choose their list by top percentages in the entire school, which seems like it would be even harder to achieve.
I personally believe that the Dean’s List should be based on GPA at all institutions, especially Monmouth University. The fact that we have such a small student body and it is hard to be rewarded academically is extremely discouraging to people who pour their heart and soul into their academics, including me. I think that no matter how other students did, that all students who worked hard enough to be considered for the Dean’s List should earn it.
I find it baffling that students who didn’t make the Dean’s List can still be eligible for Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, and even Summa Cum Laude and not make the Dean’s List any given semester solely because there was an abundance of students who also did well academically.
If anything, I think that Monmouth University choosing to select the Dean’s List this way is making them look worse academically solely because they are not reflecting all of the academic achievements of all of their students. If they switched to a Dean’s List selection process similar to schools like Rutgers University and Rowan University, in order to both look better academically and give their students a source of pride and something to work towards every semester.
If we aren’t rewarded, we aren’t doing our best work, and isn’t that what our University is all about?
