Honors
Students who expect to graduate with a 3.6 GPA in their major are eligible to graduate with honors, provided they write a research paper suitable for a honors thesis. This page describes the process by which PPE students may complete their work for graduating with honors. Information for supervising a PPE thesis is provided on this page.
The steps necessary to write a honors thesis are roughly in the following order:
(i) The student approaches a faculty member for doing research/writing a paper in a PPEsque area. This faculty member can be any permanent faculty member at Penn who agrees to take on this responsibility.
In general, the probability of a faculty member taking on a student to supervise a honors thesis is higher if:
(a) The professor knows the student, perhaps as someone who has done well in the professor's class, or with whom the professor has discussed research before.
(b) The possibility of research has been discussed in advance, rather than in the very last semester of the senior year.
(c) The subject matter of the research is reasonably clear in the student's mind, and is allied with the interests of the person being approached.
(ii) Upon agreement by the faculty, the student lets the Associate Director of PPE know about this arrangement, and intent to declare honors. The student must supply the name, department and email address of the supervisor. PPE then checks with the faculty member in question and ensures that the faculty members understands that the thesis will be used for honors.
(iii) The student enrols in PPE 301; enrolment is done by requesting a permit from PPE.
(iv) Upon completion of the paper and receiving an evaluation from the faculty supervisor that the thesis is suitable for honors, the student should submit a copy to PPE over email of this paper. The student should also ask the faculty member to email us about the evaulation in time (by end of last day of exams week of the final semester of the student as a PPE major) so that we are informed about the completion of the process. If previous steps are followed correctly, then we can also remind the faculty member to submit the evaulation ourselves if such information has not been received on time.
(v) Along with the GPA, the evaulation by the faculty member that a paper is suitable for a honors thesis, and the approval of the associate director, a student will have completed all requirements for honors. All further administrative steps will be completed by PPE, and this distinction will appear on the student's transcript.
(vi) There are no restrictions about length of the Honors thesis. As long as the approval of the concerned faculty is provided, and the Associate Director approves (the latter usually a formality), the thesis will be accepted.
(vii) The following faculty have been generous in providing supervision for honors theses for PPE students in the recent past. PPE is very grateful to such faculty for their support of our students. Please note that this list is not intended as a "suggested list" of faculty, and inclusion in this list does not imply that the faculty member is available and willing to make such a commitment again in the future.
(viii) A suggested lay-out of the first couple of pages of the final thesis, which is a formal document, is available here. This is not set in stone; appropriate deviations from this layout is fine, provided the information presented is the same, and the words "Submitted to the Philosophy, Politics and Economics Program at the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for Honors." is present.