Phi Beta Kappa Names 48 Seniors as Members

Forty-eight seniors with near perfect GPAs were recently elected into Harvard’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, joining 24 members of their class who were elected last spring.

Officially known as the Alpha Iota of Massachusetts, Harvard’s chapter—the nation’s oldest to exist continuously—elects the Junior 24 in junior spring, the Senior 48 in senior fall and an additional batch in senior spring, bringing the total membership to about 10 percent of the graduating class.

Harvard considers factors such as course rigor and professors’ recommendations on top of GPA, according to Senior Lecturer on Syriac James F. Coakley ’68, secretary of the chapter.

In electing the Senior 48, the chapter notified 96 eligible students in October based on their GPAs. Faculty and existing Phi Beta Kappa members then held three meetings where they examined the candidates’ transcripts and recommendations. “This is the only time when other students get to look at students’ transcripts,” Coakely said.

They elected members in the social sciences, humanities and natural sciences in proportion to the number of concentrators in the entire class.

In this installment, 26 seniors were elected from the social sciences, 11 from the humanities and 11 from the natural sciences.

Kristi “Gerby” K. Marks ’05, a joint concentrator in history of art and architecture and near eastern languages, said she was “absolutely shocked and surprised” to be elected.

“I didn’t anticipate that they would give any sort of value to any work I’d done in humanities,” she said.

Those elected to the Senior 48 were notified by mail last Friday, but seniors whose friends were existing members found out earlier. “One of the Junior 24 came up to me and congratulated me, so I found out a week before I got the letter,” said Aaron M. Mihaly ’05, a government concentrator.

Matthew B. Salzberg ’05, an economics concentrator, was nominated last year but got elected with the Senior 48. “Junior year is extremely tough, and it’s an honor to be even nominated to apply,” he said. “It’s a great honor to be in Phi Beta Kappa, because it means all the work you’ve put into classes is being recognized.”

For Marks, membership was an affirmation of her previous work as well as an encouraging herald to her future. “It definitely gave me inspiration in terms of my graduate school application...Harvard doesn’t give much positive confirmation of what you’re doing, it’s such a competitive school, and I tend to feel that I’m not doing all that exceptionally well,” she said.

The Senior 48 will be formally inducted in a ceremony in December or January, said Coakely. All Phi Beta Kappa members of the Class of 2005 will then participate in the Literary Exercises, a 200-year-old tradition which occurs on Tuesday of Commencement Week when members march from Harvard Hall to Sanders Theatre, led by fife and drum.

Aside from Marks, Mihaly and Salzberg, members of the Senior 48 are: Jonathan P. Abel, Rebecca J. Alaly, Ronen Ben-Efraim, Danielle V. Brown, Bethany A. Burum, Stephanie Tzu-Ying Chang, Eugene Chislenko, Jeffrey P. Clemens, Melissa L. Dell, Nicholas D. Elprin, Jonathan S. Gnoza, Caroline A. Gross, Liora R. Halperin, Veronica R. Heller, Andrew E. Holm, Margaret T. Hsieh, Honor Hsin, Andy Itsara, Jennie A. Johnson, Nicholas F. M. Josefowitz, also a Crimson editor, Emily A. Kendall, David V. Kimel, Mihuan Li, Chang C. Liu, Raluca I. Manea, Shankar A. Nair, Max C. Nicholas, Antonio L. Perez, Shira R. A. Pinnas, Alexander J. Post, Karl C. Procaccini, Krishna A. Rao, Michael B. Schnall-Levin, Julia A. Stephens, Aditya V. Sunderam, Manik V. Suri, Vaughn Y. H. Tan, Nadim N. Vasanji, Ajit Vyas, Daniel B. Weissman, R. Christian Wyatt, Yan Xuan, Wen-Chi A. Yuan, Minhua Zhang and Brian F. Zingale.