Home

Chapter Activities

Officers and Contacts

National

Selection



The Phi Beta Kappa Key bears, on the obverse, the Greek letters, Phi Beta Kappa, the initials of the words Philosophia Biou Kubernetes, meaning ``The love of wisdom is the helmsman of life.'' In the upper left corner, three stars symbolize the aims of the society; Friendship, Morality and Literature. A pointing hand symbolizes aspiration. On the reverse, the letters S P represent the second name of the society, Societas Philosophiae, the society of the love of knowledge. Below them is the historic date of the society's founding, December 5, 1776.

about us

The Selection Process: Qualifying for PBK

Who is eligible?

According to the bylaws of the national Phi Beta Kappa Society, local chapters may elect up to 10% of the annual class of undergraduate students in their college (in our case, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, or CLAS). The process by which our chapter decides which students to invite for election is outlined below. Although the vast majority of invitees come from the CLAS, each spring deans of other colleges and programs are asked for nominations of students who are obtaining bachelors degrees in their colleges, who appear to meet the spread requirement (see below) and have studied a foreign language at the college leve (or obtained equivalent credit through standard tests). Finally, students who have completed the Ph.D. degree in an arts and sciences program, whose undergraduate school did not have a chapter of PBK, whose had high GPAs as undergraduate and graduate students, and whose advisor indicates that their Ph.D. dissertation is of outstanding quality, can be elected by our Chapter.

Preliminary screening by GPA

In each Fall and Spring term, the UF chapter (Beta of Florida) screens several pools of CLAS students; for a given term, this includes (1) graduation candidates with GPA above 3.75; (2) the previous term's graduates (Fall grads for the Spring round, Spring and Summer grads for the Fall round) above 3.70; and (3) rising seniors - those having just passed 90 hours in the preceding term - with 3.85 GPA or higher.

Diversity of study in the Liberal Arts and Sciences: ("Spread")

The membership committee obtains “audits” of these students’ transcripts, which lists courses taken by major discipline. We then evaluate "spread" - the amount of coursework, in credit hours, earned outside of the student's major discipline. The major disciplines are:

There are various constraints on the tally. For example, courses required by the major; non-CLAS courses; S/U-graded classes; freshman English composition classes, and 1000-level mathematics classes (not considered as college-level by the Mathematics Department) are excluded, and a maximum of 14 in any one area can be counted. Advanced Placement courses are treated as graded UF courses and count toward spread. Coursework taken at other institutions can count toward spread as well, but a minimum of 16 hours of spread need to have been taken at UF. If the total is 34 hours or greater, the students are elected; if they're close (c. 30-33 hours), the committee member can present the student to the committee for discussion if they feel there's some exceptional work (double majors in diverse disciplines, advanced or honors work, etc.) as seen in the transcripts. The committee can then recommend those students to the chapter if so voted. The detailed listing of what courses are counted and what are excluded is part of the committee's Spread Evaluation Guidelines.

Residency Requirements

Students must have earned a minimum of 45 hours of graded CLAS credits at the University of Florida. Also, a minimum of 16 of the 34 hours of spread must be from UF.

Of the several hundred students with the minimum GPA each term, only about half are invited for election, largely because the spread requirement. This emphasis on "diverse study in the liberal arts and sciences" has been part of the chapter's criteria for many years.  With the size of the university, of course, it's impossible to do what you might at a small liberal arts college, and include recommendations and/or nominations, and other materials over and above the record of courses and grades, such as senior theses. Still, we're impressed and humbled by some of the achievements of our undergraduate electees, some of whom exceed 50 hours of spread, have advanced work in several diverse disciplines (we've had double majors in physics and classics), and who truly reflect the spirit of a liberal education.

Typically, the Membership Committee makes its report to the chapter three or four weeks before the end of semester. Elected students are notified by letter about two weeks before the end of the semester, and invited to participate in the election ceremony and reception that is held around the last week of the term.