MEDICINE is among this year’s top producer of honor graduates, with four out of eight summa cum laudes for Academic Year 2014-2015 hailing from the country’s top private medical school. Medicine also yielded 35 magna cum laudes and 40 cum laudes, a bumper crop compared with the faculty’s lone honor graduate last year.
Medicine Dean Dr. Jesus Valencia said the big number of honor graduates this year seemed to be out of proportion compared with almost 500 graduates.
“There have been changes in the way that we deliver the course that made it a little easier for students [to] graduate,” he said. “Before, we implemented base 65, meaning to say that 65 was equivalent to [a] 75 passing mark.”
Medicine plans to raise its academic standards, however.
“It is not that we are discouraging students to graduate with honors, but we want to increase the prestige that goes with it,” Valencia said.
Valencia bared that there were 21 other candidates for Latin honors but they failed the dreaded revalida—the oral examination in which medicine students perform a physical exam on a patient and discuss the case in front of a tribunal of professors.
“To graduate with honors, you have to get a grade of meritus. If you fail to do that, even if your general average fulfills the criteria of the three [Latin] honors, you will not be given so,” he said.
The Faculty of Pharmacy dominated this year’s honor roll with 173 Latin honorees out of 698 graduates, data from the Office of the Registrar showed.
Pharmacy produced three summa cum laudes (all from the medical technology), 38 magna cum laudes, and 132 cum laudes.
Pharmacy Acting Dean Jocelyn Domingo said the implementation of a stricter retention policy contributed to the increase in honor graduates.
“Since 2012, we [have been] implementing a stricter retention policy—that is zero failure and deficiency upon entry to the next academic year for first- and second-year students,” she said. “A yearly review and enhancement of syllabi content and improvement of teaching strategies were also factors.”
The Faculty of Arts and Letters (Artlets) came in second, producing a total number of 125 honor graduates out of 965 graduates.
Artlets also produced the highest number of graduates for this year with 965, or 12 percent of the total 8,042 graduates for AY 2014-2015.
The College of Tourism and Hospitality Management (CTHM), the top producer of honor graduates since 2011, produced 103 honor graduates out of 428.
Tourism and Travel Management produced 59 percent of CTHM’s honor graduates. Program chair Fredeswindo Medina attributed the high number of honor students to the college’s selection process and student motivation.
The College of Education produced a summa cum laude along with 40 other honor graduates.
The UST-Alfredo M. Velayo College of Accountancy had 52 honor graduates out of 755 graduates this year, from only one last year.
The College of Science, the College of Architecture, and the College of Rehabilitation Sciences (CRS) also produced more honor graduates. Science’s honor roll increased from last year’s 39 honor graduates out of 611, to this year’s 56 out of 614. Architecture’s honor roll swelled from last year’s 17 out of 400, to this year’s 31 out of 380. Similarly, CRS went up from last year’s 14 out of 230, to this year’s 17 out of 258.
The Faculty of Civil Law produced two honor graduates this year compared with its lone honor graduate last year.
In contrast, the number of honor graduates at the Conservatory of Music, the Faculty of Engineering, the College of Nursing, the College of Commerce and Business Administration, and the College of Fine Arts and Design (CFAD) declined.
Music produced nine honor graduates out of 64 this year, lower than last year’s six out of 30 graduates. Engineering produced 39 honor graduates out of 774 compared with last year’s 66 honor graduates out of 1,140.
Nursing and Commerce produced 13 honor graduates out of 453 graduates and 37 honor graduates out of 841, lower than last year’s 15 out of 457 and 36 out of 810, respectively.
CFAD recorded the same number of honor graduates compared with last year, 74, although the number of graduates went down from last year’s 503 to this year’s 459.
The newly established Institute of Information and Computing Sciences produced 31 honor graduates out of 380 graduates.
Batch 2015 had a total of 883 Latin honorees out of 8,042 graduates, with eight summa cum laudes, 122 magna cum laudes, and 753 cum laudes, data from the Registrar showed.
Statistics from the Graduate School and the Ecclesiastical Faculties were excluded from this report. Mary Grace C. Esmaya and Mary Gillan Frances G. Ropero
