Cum laude is a Latin phrase meaning “with praise” or “with honor,” and it appears on a college diploma to recognize students who earned especially high grades. It is the first of three Latin honor levels awarded at graduation, sitting below magna cum laude (“with great praise”) and summa cum laude (“with highest praise”). If you see the term on a diploma, transcript, or resume, it signals that the graduate finished in roughly the top quarter of their class academically.
The Three Levels of Latin Honors
Most four-year colleges and universities in the United States use the same three-tier system:
- Cum laude (“with praise”): the entry level of Latin honors, recognizing strong academic performance.
- Magna cum laude (“with great praise”): a step higher, reserved for students near the top of their class.
- Summa cum laude (“with highest praise”): the pinnacle, awarded to the very top graduates.
Not every school uses all three tiers. Some smaller colleges award only cum laude and summa cum laude, skipping the middle tier entirely. A few use the phrase “with distinction” or “with high distinction” instead of Latin, though the idea is the same.
How Schools Decide Who Qualifies
There is no universal GPA cutoff for cum laude. Each college sets its own criteria, and the two most common approaches are fixed GPA thresholds and relative class ranking.
Schools that use fixed thresholds pick a specific GPA number. The University of Minnesota, for example, requires a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.500 for cum laude, 3.666 for magna cum laude, and 3.750 for summa cum laude, calculated on courses taken after 60 graded credits. These numbers stay the same regardless of how many students hit them in a given year.
Other schools tie honors to where you land relative to your classmates. Vanderbilt University awards cum laude to students whose GPA falls within the next 12 percent after the magna and summa tiers, magna cum laude to the next 8 percent below summa, and summa cum laude to the top 5 percent. Under that system, the actual GPA needed shifts each year depending on how the graduating class performed. For Vanderbilt’s 2025-2026 cycle, the cum laude cutoff in Arts and Sciences is a 3.901, while in Engineering it’s a 3.854.
The practical difference matters. At a school with a fixed 3.5 threshold, a large share of the class might earn cum laude during a year of high grades. At a school using percentile bands, the share stays capped. Some institutions explicitly aim to keep total honors awards to roughly 10 to 15 percent of a graduating class to preserve their meaning.
Where the Honor Shows Up
If you graduate cum laude, the designation typically appears in three places: printed on your diploma, noted on your official transcript, and listed in the commencement program. Many schools also give graduates a visual marker to wear during the ceremony. Cord colors vary by institution, but a common pattern is white cords for cum laude, silver for magna cum laude, and gold for summa cum laude. Some schools use colored stoles, medallions, or tassels instead.
GPAs at most schools are calculated to the third decimal place and are not rounded up, so a 3.499 would not qualify at a school with a 3.500 cutoff. If you’re close to the line, it’s worth checking your school’s registrar page for the exact policy.
Does Cum Laude Matter for Jobs?
For your first job out of college, Latin honors can give your resume a small but real edge. Hiring managers reviewing entry-level candidates have limited information to work with, and a cum laude designation signals that you performed consistently well over four years. HR professionals describe it as a useful indicator of discipline and follow-through, especially when comparing candidates with similar majors and internship experience.
That advantage fades fairly quickly. Recruiters note that Latin honors are not an automatic pass to any position. Once you have a few years of work experience, employers focus on what you’ve accomplished professionally rather than your college GPA. By mid-career, most people drop the honor from their resume entirely.
For graduate school applications, the story is a bit different. Admissions committees weigh undergraduate GPA heavily, and a cum laude notation reinforces a strong transcript. It won’t override a weak personal statement or low standardized test scores, but it contributes to the overall picture of academic readiness.
How to List It on a Resume
If you earned cum laude, include it in the education section of your resume right next to your degree. A standard format looks like this: “Bachelor of Arts in Economics, cum laude, University Name, 2024.” You can italicize the Latin phrase since it’s a foreign-language term, though either style is acceptable. Keep it lowercase (cum laude, not Cum Laude), which follows standard Latin convention.
Some graduates wonder whether cum laude is worth listing if they didn’t reach magna or summa. It is. Any tier of Latin honors puts you above the majority of your graduating class, and omitting it leaves a credential on the table. Just be accurate: inflating cum laude to magna cum laude is easy to verify and would raise serious credibility concerns with any employer who checks.