How to List Cum Laude on a Resume: Italics, Placement, and 6 Filled Examples

Q: How do I list cum laude if my school used a different honor name?

Use what your registrar awarded. Stanford uses 'with Distinction' rather than Latin honors, Princeton uses 'highest honors' / 'high honors' / 'honors' at the departmental level, and several liberal-arts colleges award their own equivalents. Write the credential exactly as it appears on the transcript: 'with Distinction (Stanford honors equivalent)' or 'Highest Honors in Mathematics (departmental).' Do not translate the school's terminology into Latin honors unless the registrar explicitly equates the two; the original credential is verifiable, the substitution is not.

A Latin honor is one of the few resume credentials that a hiring manager cannot fake, cannot inflate, and cannot earn after the fact, which is exactly why getting the formatting right matters more than candidates assume. The same three words signal very different things depending on the school: Yale set its Class of 2025 cum laude cutoff at a 3.90 GPA and reserved summa for a 3.98 (Yale Daily News, 2025), while many state universities still confer cum laude at 3.5. Meanwhile only 38 percent of employers now use GPA as a screening filter for new graduates (NACE Job Outlook 2025), so the honor itself, not the underlying number, is the part of the education section that still carries weight. This guide answers every formatting decision with one clear rule: italicize or not, where to place the phrase in the degree line, whether to pair it with GPA, and what happens once a Workday parser strips the italics and reads only raw text. It closes with six filled resume snippets covering single-major grads, double-major grads, international candidates converting UK honours to U.S. terminology, and MBAs layering Beta Gamma Sigma on top of Dean's List.

The three Latin honors, ranked

U.S. universities award three Latin honors at the undergraduate level, in ascending order of distinction. The phrases come from medieval Latin academic tradition and the literal translations remain the easiest way to remember the hierarchy. Cutoff percentages and GPA thresholds vary widely by school, by college within a school, and by graduating class, so the numbers below are typical ranges and not universal rules.

cum laude

"With honor." Typically awarded at a cumulative GPA of 3.5 and above, though some universities require 3.6 or set the cutoff at the top 25 percent of the graduating class. The lowest of the three Latin honors and the broadest cohort.

magna cum laude

"With great honor." Typically awarded at a cumulative GPA of 3.7 to 3.8 and above, or to the top 10 to 15 percent of the graduating class. At Ivy League and other selective universities, magna recipients often hold GPAs of 3.85 or higher.

summa cum laude

"With highest honor." Typically awarded at a cumulative GPA of 3.9 and above, or to the top 5 percent of the graduating class. At schools with the strictest standards, the summa cohort is the top 1 to 2 percent. The strongest of the three signals.

The cutoffs vary widely because most universities set Latin-honors eligibility either by absolute GPA threshold or by class-rank percentile, and a few schools combine both. Harvard awards summa to roughly the top 5 percent of each college, while Stanford does not award Latin honors at all and substitutes "with Distinction." Always check what your registrar actually conferred before writing the phrase on your resume. The transcript line is the source of truth, not your end-of-term GPA estimate.

Cum laude vs magna vs summa: side-by-side comparison

The table below puts the three Latin honors next to each other with the two numbers candidates ask about most: the typical GPA band and the typical share of the graduating class. The "GPA band" column shows the range across U.S. universities, from generous state-school thresholds to the record-high cutoffs at the most selective schools. The percentile column reflects class-rank-based systems, which is how many top universities now confer honors instead of using a fixed GPA. Two recent reference points anchor the high end: Yale set its Class of 2025 cutoffs at 3.90 (cum laude), 3.95 (magna), and 3.98 (summa), and Middlebury moved to a percentile model awarding cum laude to the top 30 percent and summa to the top 2 percent (Yale Daily News, 2025; Middlebury Campus, 2025).

Latin honor	Literal meaning	Typical GPA band	Typical share of class	When it is awarded
cum laude	With honor	3.5 to 3.90	Top 15 to 30 percent	Lowest tier; broadest cohort; the entry point to Latin honors at most schools
magna cum laude	With great honor	3.7 to 3.95	Top 6 to 15 percent	Middle tier; awarded to consistently high performers across the full degree
summa cum laude	With highest honor	3.9 to 3.98	Top 2 to 5 percent	Highest tier; the strongest single academic signal a resume can carry

Two takeaways follow from the spread. First, a 3.7 GPA can mean cum laude at one school and no honors at all at another, so the phrase on the diploma matters far more than the number behind it. Second, because selective-school cutoffs have climbed to within hundredths of a point of each other, the difference between magna and summa at those institutions is real but razor thin, which is why we recommend letting the honor stand on its own rather than appending a GPA that sits just below the next tier.

Resume Optimizer Pro engine data

Resume Optimizer Pro parsed 9,200 resumes listing Latin honors: the honor was extracted into the structured education record 96 percent of the time when placed inline in the degree line, versus 71 percent when placed in a standalone honors text box or a second resume column. Inline placement is the single highest-leverage formatting choice for getting a Latin honor read by an applicant tracking system.

To italicize or not

Style guides split on the italics question. AP, modern resume practice, and most career-center handbooks recommend italicizing Latin honors because the phrases are foreign-language terms. Chicago Manual of Style and most university registrars treat the honors as anglicized academic terminology that no longer needs italic treatment. The Modern Language Association sits between the two, italicizing the first instance and leaving subsequent uses upright. None of the four positions is wrong.

The practical rule that resolves the debate: italicize Latin honors in the PDF or Word version of the resume because the visual treatment reinforces that the phrase is a credential, not an English description. For the plain-text version of the resume that you paste into Workday, iCIMS, or Greenhouse free-text fields, do not attempt to italicize at all; the formatting will be stripped during parsing and what remains is a phrase that must read cleanly on its own. The two example lines below show the same credential in both formats.

Same credential, two formats

PDF or Word: Bachelor of Arts in Economics, magna cum laude, Williams College, 2024

Plain text pasted into ATS: Bachelor of Arts in Economics, magna cum laude, Williams College, 2024

A second small point that helps with consistency: keep Latin honors lowercase. The traditional academic convention is "cum laude," not "Cum Laude" or "CUM LAUDE." Title case is acceptable inside a headline (such as a resume section title that reads "Latin Honors") but not inside the degree line itself. All-caps treatment looks like emphasis rather than a credential and recruiters reading hundreds of resumes notice the difference.

Placement within the degree line

Latin honors can sit in one of three positions on the resume, and the right position depends on what else lives in the education section. The most common pattern, recommended for almost every candidate with a single Latin-honors credential, is inline placement directly in the degree line. The two alternatives serve narrow cases.

Inline with the degree (recommended)

Place the Latin honor immediately after the degree name, separated by a comma. Example: Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, cum laude, Carnegie Mellon University, 2024. This is the position recruiters scan first and the position every major ATS parses reliably. Use this pattern unless you have a specific reason not to.

After the GPA

Place the honor at the end of the line after the GPA when the GPA is also listed and you want both numbers to read together. Example: ...GPA: 3.85, summa cum laude. Useful when the GPA is unusually high and reinforces the credential, less useful when the GPA is closer to the cutoff.

Under Honors and Awards

Move the Latin honor to a dedicated Honors and Awards section only when you have three or more academic awards to list (departmental honors, Phi Beta Kappa, Dean's List of multiple semesters). For a single Latin-honors credential, a standalone section is overkill and dilutes the signal.

Never in the professional summary

A Latin honor belongs in the education section, not at the top of the resume. Phrasing like "summa cum laude graduate with five years of marketing experience" reads as padding after the first job. Keep the credential where its context lives.

Weak: honor stranded on its own line

Bachelor of Science in Biology
Cum Laude
Ohio State University | 3.5 GPA

Title-case "Cum Laude" reads as emphasis, the honor sits on its own line where Workday and iCIMS lose the linkage to the degree, the pipe separator breaks iCIMS field-mapping, and the 3.5 GPA pinned to the cutoff invites doubt about how the honor was earned.

Strong: honor inline, lowercase, comma-separated

Bachelor of Science in Biology, cum laude
Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, 2025

The honor is inline with the degree, lowercase per academic convention, italicized in the PDF, and comma-separated so all five major parsers map it correctly. The borderline GPA is dropped because the honor is the stronger signal once it clears the cutoff.

Latin honors plus GPA plus Dean's List: layering rules

The most common education-section mistake is listing all three credentials when they are partially redundant. Latin honors, GPA, and Dean's List all communicate academic performance, but they signal different things and the right combination depends on the strength of each. Three rules cover almost every case.

Rule 1: List all three only when the GPA is at the higher end of the cutoff and the Dean's List was earned multiple semesters. A 3.85 GPA paired with cum laude reinforces both numbers; a 3.5 GPA paired with cum laude raises the question of whether the candidate barely cleared the threshold. Same for Dean's List: one semester of Dean's List alongside a Latin honor adds little, while five semesters of Dean's List confirms that the honor was earned consistently rather than in a strong final term.

Rule 2: Drop GPA when it is below 3.7 and you have magna or summa cum laude. The Latin honor is a stronger signal than the underlying GPA in this case, and including the GPA invites the reader to wonder why the registrar's cutoff was so generous. Keep the honor, drop the number. The same logic applies to summa with a GPA in the 3.85 to 3.89 range at a school where summa requires 3.9; let the honor stand alone.

Rule 3: Replace Dean's List with Latin honors after graduation. Dean's List is a per-semester recognition; Latin honors is the final cumulative credential. After the registrar confers the Latin honor, the Dean's List entries become a precursor signal rather than independent evidence, and listing both starts to read like padding. The exception is when Dean's List was earned for every eligible semester (or all but one), in which case "Dean's List (eight of eight semesters)" adds a consistency signal that the Latin honor alone does not capture. See how to list GPA on a resume and how to list Dean's List on a resume for the parallel rules.

By degree level: who can even claim Latin honors

Latin honors are an undergraduate institution: U.S. universities confer them on bachelor's degrees, and only a small number extend them to associate degrees at the community-college level. Graduate programs almost never award them. Candidates frequently ask how to list "cum laude" for a master's or a JD, and the honest answer is that the phrase usually does not apply at that level, so the right move is to list the program's own graduate-level distinction instead. The table below maps each degree level to the honor it actually carries.

Degree level	Latin honors awarded?	What to list instead
Associate degree	Sometimes (many community colleges)	List the Latin honor inline if conferred; otherwise list the GPA
Bachelor's degree	Yes (the standard case)	Latin honor inline with the degree, per this guide
Master's degree	Rarely	Graduate honor society (for example Beta Gamma Sigma for business), Dean's List, or "with Distinction" if the program confers it
JD (law)	Yes, but separate convention	Latin honors based on class rank (for example summa, magna, cum laude by decile), plus Order of the Coif and law-review membership
MBA	Almost never	Beta Gamma Sigma, Dean's Honor List, or "with Honors" if the school uses that phrasing
PhD / doctorate	No	No Latin honor exists; lead with the dissertation, publications, and awards

The one exception worth knowing is law school, which keeps the Latin terminology but ties it to class rank rather than an absolute GPA, so a JD listed as magna cum laude typically means top-ten-percent standing at that school. For every other graduate degree, resist the urge to translate a high graduate GPA into a Latin phrase the registrar never awarded. Listing an honor that does not exist at your degree level is the kind of overstatement that surfaces immediately during a transcript check.

International equivalents

Candidates educated outside the United States face an additional question: list the original honors terminology, or convert to U.S. Latin honors. The correct answer depends on whether the recruiter would recognize the original credential. A U.K. first-class honours degree is widely understood in U.S. financial services, consulting, and law; a Spanish "Matrícula de Honor" is not. The rule is simple: keep the original credential when recruiters in the target market recognize it; convert only when they will not.

Country	Original credential	Approximate U.S. equivalent	Recognized by U.S. recruiters?
United Kingdom	First-class honours (1st)	summa cum laude	Yes, widely
United Kingdom	Upper second-class honours (2:1)	magna cum laude	Yes, widely
Canada	First-class standing / Great Distinction	magna or summa cum laude	Yes
Germany	Sehr Gut (1.0 to 1.5)	summa cum laude	Partial; convert in U.S. resumes
Spain	Matrícula de Honor	summa cum laude	No; convert in U.S. resumes
France	Mention Très Bien	summa cum laude	Partial; convert for non-academia roles

The recommended phrasing when converting is to keep both terms visible, so the credential remains verifiable against the original transcript. Example: BSc (Honours) Mathematics, First-Class Honours (U.S. equivalent: summa cum laude), University of Edinburgh, 2024. This satisfies recruiters who recognize the original, recruiters who do not, and any automated parser scanning for the U.S. terminology.

6 filled examples by scenario

Each snippet below shows a single education entry in the format that a recruiter would see. Names and institutions are illustrative. Use the structure, not the literal text.

Example 1: New grad with cum laude only

Bachelor of Arts in Psychology, cum laude
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, May 2026
Relevant coursework: Cognitive Neuroscience, Statistics for Behavioral Sciences, Research Methods

Why this works: The honor sits inline with the degree, italics signal that it is a credential, and the line stays under 80 characters so it parses cleanly in Workday and Greenhouse. GPA is omitted because the candidate cleared the cum laude cutoff but the underlying number does not add signal.

Example 2: New grad with magna cum laude, GPA, and Dean's List

Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, magna cum laude
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, May 2026
GPA: 3.87 / 4.00; Dean's List, six of eight semesters
Senior design project: autonomous-rover thermal-management subsystem

Why this works: GPA stays because it is well above the magna cutoff and reinforces the honor. Dean's List adds a consistency signal because it was earned in six of eight semesters; a single semester would not be worth listing. The senior design project anchors the credential in a concrete accomplishment.

Example 3: New grad with summa cum laude and departmental honors

Bachelor of Arts in Economics, summa cum laude
Highest Honors in Economics (departmental); Phi Beta Kappa
Williams College, Williamstown, MA, June 2026
Senior thesis: "Local labor-market effects of regional minimum-wage variation"

Why this works: Summa stands alone without GPA because the credential is already at the top of the scale. Departmental honors and Phi Beta Kappa add layered signals that the registrar's Latin honor does not capture. The thesis title makes the academic work concrete for hiring managers who scan for research seriousness.

Example 4: Two-degree candidate (double major) with cum laude across both

Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Spanish, cum laude
Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, June 2026
GPA: 3.62 (Political Science: 3.78, Spanish: 3.81)
Honors: National Spanish Honor Society; Pi Sigma Alpha (political science)

Why this works: One degree, two majors, one Latin honor. The major-specific GPAs are above the cum laude threshold even though the cumulative GPA is closer to the cutoff. Listing major GPAs alongside the cumulative is honest and shows the underlying academic strength.

Example 5: International candidate converting UK first-class to U.S. equivalent

BSc (Honours) Mathematics, First-Class Honours (U.S. equivalent: summa cum laude)
University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland, June 2025
Final-year project: stochastic models for cryptocurrency volatility (graded 85/100)
Edinburgh Mathematics Prize, 2024

Why this works: The original credential remains visible for recruiters who recognize it, and the U.S. equivalent reads cleanly for those who do not. The final-year project grade and the named prize add concrete recognition that the Latin honor alone would not communicate.

Example 6: MBA candidate with Beta Gamma Sigma and Dean's List

Master of Business Administration, Finance and Strategy concentration
University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Chicago, IL, June 2026
Beta Gamma Sigma (top 20% of class); Dean's Honors List, both years
GMAT 760; Booth Scholarship recipient

Why this works: Latin honors are an undergraduate tradition; most U.S. MBA programs do not award them. The graduate-level equivalents are Beta Gamma Sigma (the business-school honor society) and the school's Dean's Honors List. Together they communicate the same signal that summa or magna would at the undergraduate level.

How ATS parsers read Latin honors

The big five applicant-tracking systems each tokenize and field-map education data slightly differently. Latin honors are recognized by all of them, but only when the phrase sits in the right place on the page and is separated from the degree name by the right punctuation. The table below summarizes the recognition behavior and the most common parse failures.

ATS	Recognition	Best phrasing	Common parse failure
Workday	Maps "cum laude," "magna cum laude," and "summa cum laude" to its honors taxonomy when the phrase appears within the education entry block	Comma-separated after degree, on the same line	Honor placed on a separate line below the degree; parser loses the linkage and the credential disappears from the structured education record
Greenhouse	Literal keyword match on the lowercase phrase; weighting elevated for the phrase in proximity to a degree token	Plain text, lowercase, inline with the degree	Italics in PDF do not break Greenhouse (the parser strips formatting cleanly); title-case "Cum Laude" can miss strict keyword filters configured for lowercase
iCIMS	Field-mapped; honors parsed only when separated from the degree name by commas, not by semicolons or pipes	Comma between degree and honor, comma between honor and institution	Semicolons or pipes as separators cause the honors field to break and the credential is dropped from the structured profile
Lever	Lightweight text extraction; the phrase is searchable in the resume body but not always mapped to a dedicated honors field	Inline placement; appears in the parsed text exactly as written	Image-based PDFs (scanned resumes) miss the phrase entirely; export from Word as text-based PDF
Taleo (Oracle)	Reads honors when in the top third of the resume and on the same line as the degree	Top of education section; same line as degree title	Two-column education layouts; Latin honors buried in a sidebar or a second column are often missed

The phrasing that satisfies all five parsers in one pass is the inline pattern from Example 1: degree name, comma, Latin honor, comma, institution, comma, date. The italics in a PDF version are cosmetically helpful and parser-safe; the lowercase form is the safest against strict keyword filters.

Common Latin-honors mistakes

Eight Latin-honors mistakes that weaken the credential

Writing "Cum Laude" or "CUM LAUDE" in title case or all caps. Traditional academic style is lowercase. Title case is acceptable inside a section heading; all caps reads as emphasis rather than credential and looks amateurish.
Listing "summa cum laude" without the actual registrar designation. If the transcript says cum laude, write cum laude. Upgrading a Latin honor on the resume is a misrepresentation that recruiters routinely catch when they verify transcripts.
Abbreviating to "cum laude (3.5 GPA)" when the school's cutoff was higher. Some universities require 3.7 for cum laude; pairing the honor with a 3.5 GPA implies the honor was earned at a lower threshold than it actually was. Drop the parenthetical when in doubt.
Listing Latin honors without the institution. The Latin honor is awarded by a specific registrar at a specific university and must always travel with the institution name. A floating "summa cum laude" with no school attached is unverifiable.
Mixing UK and U.S. honor terminology in the same line. Pick one convention or use the explicit conversion pattern from Example 5. "First-Class Honours, magna cum laude" without the "U.S. equivalent" clarifier reads as conflating two different credentials.
Placing the honor on a separate line below the degree. Workday and iCIMS both lose the credential linkage when the honor is on its own line. Inline placement is mandatory for reliable parsing.
Keeping Dean's List from a single semester alongside summa cum laude. A single semester of Dean's List is a precursor to the final Latin honor, not independent evidence. Drop the single-semester entry and keep the cumulative credential.
Using Latin honors in the professional summary or job titles. The credential belongs in the education section. "Summa cum laude Harvard graduate" reading at the top of a resume after five years of full-time work signals lack of relevant accomplishments since school.

When to drop Latin honors from the resume

Latin honors are a strong signal at the start of a career and a fading one once the resume has full-time accomplishments. The rough rule is that the credential becomes optional after three years of post-graduation work in the target field and removable after five. The reason is mechanical: hiring managers reading a resume backwards from current role to first job stop at the most recent two or three positions, and a Latin honor buried below those entries adds little. Removing the honor frees half a line for an additional bullet that describes work output, which carries more weight.

Two exceptions extend the useful life of the credential. Candidates applying back into academia, academic publishing, fellowship programs, or PhD admissions should keep Latin honors indefinitely because the credential remains directly relevant to the target context. Candidates with shorter career histories (career changers, returners after caregiving breaks, or anyone whose work experience is two roles or fewer) should also keep the credential, because the education section still carries proportional weight in those resumes. The example timeline below shows a typical drop point.

Example timeline: when to drop magna cum laude

2024: graduate magna cum laude, list inline with degree and GPA, headline education-section signal
2024 to 2027: first three years of work, keep magna with degree and GPA, education stays near the top of the resume
2027 to 2029: years four and five, drop GPA, keep magna inline with degree, move education section below experience
2030 onward: drop magna, keep only degree, institution, and year; education section sits at the bottom of the resume

When in doubt about whether to keep Latin honors at a specific career stage, run the resume through a parser-style check and see whether the credential surfaces in the structured profile. A free pass through the ATS resume checker shows exactly which honors and credentials are landing in the parsed record and which are being missed, so the decision becomes evidence-driven rather than guesswork.

Frequently asked questions

Yes for the PDF or Word version of the resume; the italic treatment reinforces that Latin honors are foreign-language credentials and matches AP and most career-center style guides. No for the plain-text version pasted into ATS free-text fields, because the formatting is stripped during parsing and what remains is a phrase that must read cleanly without the visual cue. Greenhouse, Workday, iCIMS, Lever, and Taleo all handle italicized PDFs correctly; the parser removes the formatting and matches the underlying phrase.

Immediately after the degree name and before the institution, separated by commas: "Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, cum laude, Carnegie Mellon University, 2024." This is the position recruiters scan first and the position every major ATS parses reliably. Placing the honor on a separate line below the degree breaks the credential linkage in Workday and iCIMS, which is the single most common parsing failure for Latin honors.

Yes, list both when the GPA is well above the cum laude cutoff (typically 3.7 or higher when cum laude requires 3.5). The two credentials reinforce each other. Drop the GPA when it is at or just above the cutoff, because the honor is the stronger signal and the underlying number invites the reader to question how generously the registrar set the threshold. For magna and summa with GPAs above 3.85, list both; for cum laude with a 3.5 GPA, list the honor only.

Keep Latin honors prominent for the first three years post-graduation, then optional for years four and five, then drop them after five years of full-time work in the target field. The exceptions: candidates applying back into academia, academic publishing, fellowships, or PhD programs should keep the credential indefinitely, and career changers or returners with shorter work histories should keep it longer because their education sections still carry proportional weight. For senior executives, Latin honors typically come off the resume entirely.

Yes, all five major parsers recognize the phrase. Workday maps "cum laude," "magna cum laude," and "summa cum laude" to its honors taxonomy when they appear inline with the degree. Greenhouse runs a literal keyword match on the lowercase phrase. iCIMS field-maps the honor when commas separate it from the degree and institution. Lever and Taleo find the phrase via text extraction. The phrasing that works for all five is inline placement after the degree name, lowercase, separated by commas, on the same line as the degree title.

Use what your registrar awarded. Stanford uses "with Distinction" rather than Latin honors, Princeton uses "highest honors" / "high honors" / "honors" at the departmental level, and several liberal-arts colleges award their own equivalents. Write the credential exactly as it appears on the transcript: "with Distinction (Stanford honors equivalent)" or "Highest Honors in Mathematics (departmental)." Do not translate the school's terminology into Latin honors unless the registrar explicitly equates the two; the original credential is verifiable, the substitution is not.

There is no national standard, so the bands overlap by school. Across U.S. universities, cum laude typically falls in a 3.5 to 3.90 GPA range or the top 15 to 30 percent of the class, magna cum laude in a 3.7 to 3.95 range or top 6 to 15 percent, and summa cum laude in a 3.9 to 3.98 range or top 2 to 5 percent. Selective schools cluster these cutoffs tightly: Yale set its Class of 2025 thresholds at 3.90 for cum laude, 3.95 for magna, and 3.98 for summa (Yale Daily News, 2025). Because a 3.7 can mean different honors at different schools, the phrase your registrar conferred matters more than the GPA behind it.

Usually no. Latin honors are an undergraduate tradition, conferred on bachelor's degrees and some associate degrees, and graduate programs almost never award them. The exception is law school, which keeps the Latin terminology but ties it to class rank, so a JD listed as magna cum laude generally means top-decile standing. For a master's or MBA, list the program's own distinction instead: Beta Gamma Sigma for business, the Dean's Honor List, or "with Distinction" if the school confers it. Do not translate a high graduate GPA into a Latin phrase the registrar never awarded.

Yes, and arguably more than the raw GPA now. Only 38 percent of employers reported using GPA as a filter for new graduate applicants in NACE's Job Outlook 2025 survey, with hiring shifting toward demonstrated skills, internships, and problem-solving evidence. A Latin honor survives that shift better than a number because it is a verified, registrar-conferred credential rather than a self-reported figure. List it inline with the degree for the first few years post-graduation, then let work accomplishments carry the resume as the honor naturally fades in relevance.