Phi Beta Kappa Elects 88 Seniors

The Harvard chapter of Phi Beta Kappa elected 88 seniors earlier this month to join the ranks of academic standouts in the national collegiate honors society.

The new members, who will graduate with some of the highest grade-point averages in the Class of 2005, are the last students in their class to be admitted into the organization.

Phi Beta Kappa’s guidelines stipulate that no more than 10 percent of the graduating class can become a part of the society. Twenty-four members of the Class of 2005 were selected last spring, and another 48 were chosen in November.

According to James F. Coakley ’68—secretary of Harvard’s 226-year-old chapter, Alpha Iota of Massachusetts—students are nominated in proportion to the total number of concentrators in their class in the social sciences, the humanities, and the natural sciences.

Among the 88 students, just over half are social science concentrators. The other half is about equally divided between the humanities and the natural sciences, said Coakley, who is also a senior lecturer in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

For this round, the society nominated 176 seniors—twice the number that were finally elected. As in past years, the nominations were based primarily on grade-point averages.

After receiving notification of their eligibility, the students were asked to submit two faculty letters of recommendation and to release their transcripts to a selection committee, which included Harvard juniors and seniors who had already been inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. The committee, which was moderated by faculty members, met from May 10 to 12 and evaluated the intensity, diversity, and integrity of each nominee’s academic record.

“Students [on the committee] are really merciless about what kinds of courses students have taken,” Coakley said, adding that “the only thing we don’t look at is extracurriculars.”

“The competition is incredibly fierce,” he added.

Students contacted yesterday said that they had not worked solely to earn the honor, but saw it as a testament to their efforts.

Joseph R. Oliveri ’05, a government concentrator, said that becoming a member had “always been a bit of a dream.”

“I don’t see it as an end in itself, but rather finding success throughout my time here,” he said. “It’s a great way to culminate four years here.”

Rebecca L. Lambert ’05, a history of science concentrator, said that being selected for Phi Beta Kappa “hadn’t been a goal” for her.

“It wasn’t something I’d expected at all...but it was a nice reward,” she said.

While Coakley congratulated the chosen students, he expressed concern over the disappointment among those nominated, but then not selected.

According to Coakley, administrators who oversee Harvard’s chapter—the oldest continually operating Phi Beta Kappa chapter in the country—have considered ways to “change the system.”

“The only way we could do it differently would be to do it entirely by GPA, as some colleges do,” he said.

“We would be electing different people, without looking at the quality of their course work or their references,” he said, adding that the chapter’s rules were unlikely to change.

The following 88 members of the Class of 2005 were elected to Harvard’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.

Adams: Alexander H. Berlin, Gabriel I. Chodorow-Reich, Brian M. Haas, Rebecca L. Lambert, Andrew W. Ng, Stephen W. Stromberg

Cabot: Kerry J. Dingle, Philip D. Dreyfuss, Richard E. Freeman, Xiaoyu Gu, Kamila M. Lis, Henry M. Rosenberg, Sixiao Xu, Oussama Zahr

Currier: Lindsey A. Baker, Robert L. Cioffi, Andrea E. Flores, Patricia K. Foo, Jessica E. Vascellaro

Dunster: David H. Chao, Magali A. Fassiotto, Jared M. Fleisher, Jeffrey A. Friedman, Elizabeth H. Peterson, Eli S. Rosenbaum, Sophia I. Sherry

Eliot: Timur Akazhanov, Deema B. Arafah, Sarah L. Bishop, Bryan D. Choi, Patrick S. Dinneen, Fuad Faridi, Anna E. Harkey, Zhe Lu, Kimberley S. Mak, Arik Motskin, Joseph R. Oliveri, Katherine E. Talcott

Kirkland: Steven M. Amis, Michael D. George, Ryan M. Geraghty, Samuel W. Lessin, Richard K. Mansfield, Griffin E. Schroeder, Joseph H. Weintraub, Jeffrey J. Wu

Leverett: Matthew D. Gibson, Kerry M. Houlihan, Andrew C. Karas, Nina Ni

Lowell: Shalini Ananthanarayanan, Deepa B. Dhume, Aaron M. Golden, Nilanthi D. Gunawardane, Samuel L. Harris, Andrei Jorza, Jody M. Kelman, Mariangela Lisanti, Yulia Ryzhik, Katherine J. Thompson, Man Y. C. Tsang, Stephen C. Walker

Mather: Kexun Dong, Marcel A. Q. LaFlamme, Sarah R. Lehrer-Graiwer, Adam S. Levine, Susan K. Mathai, Swati Mylavarapu

Pforzheimer: Peter M. Brown, Sarah K. Burke, Charlotte H. Douglas, Maria Konnikova, Miriam D. Lense, Peter L. McMurray, Christopher A. Searcy, Nellwyn A. Thomas

Quincy: Victor D. Ban, Michael J. Berkovits, Raja G. Haddad, Erin M. Kane, Matthew D. Podolsky

Winthrop: Kevin B. Holden, Ronen E. Mukamel, Christine B. Peterson, George M. Saalouke, Monika H. Schleier-Smith, Brian M. Wendell, Elizabeth A. Whitman

—Staff writer Daniel J. T. Schuker can be reached at dschuker@fas.harvard.edu.