What it means
Many universities award graduates one of three Latin honours: cum laude (with praise), magna cum laude (with great praise) and summa cum laude (with highest praise). Summa is the highest of the three and is normally reserved for a small share of each graduating class.
The exact cut-off is chosen by each institution, and some use grade averages while others use rankings or a faculty vote. In finance and accounting, the phrase turns up on CVs, in graduate recruitment and in the biographies of senior hires.
Employers use it as a quick screen, because strong results in quantitative subjects can suggest discipline and analytical ability. Graduate programmes at banks, accountancy firms and consultancies often receive thousands of applications, so a visible honour can help a CV get read.
It also appears in the background checks that finance teams run on new hires and on directors. A claimed honour should be verifiable with the awarding university, and a false claim is serious enough to cost someone their job.
Checking qualifications is a normal part of due diligence, which is the careful verification of facts before a decision. The nuance is that the honour is not comparable across universities, countries or years.
A summa at one institution might apply to the top 5% of a class and at another to a much larger group, and some institutions do not use Latin honours at all. In the United Kingdom, for example, degrees are usually classified as first, upper second and so on, so a hiring manager has to translate between systems.
For a hiring manager, the sensible approach is to treat the honour as a mild positive signal rather than a decision. Professional qualifications, relevant experience, communication skills and references usually predict success in a finance role better than a single label.
The cost of a poor hire is far greater than the cost of looking a little deeper.
In practice
Real-world examples.
Example
A mid-sized accountancy firm receives 900 applications for 20 graduate trainee places. The recruiter shortlists everyone with a first-class degree or summa cum laude, then tests them on numerical reasoning and a short written exercise. The honour only narrows the field, and the final choice rests on how candidates perform in those tests and at interview.
Example
A fintech startup is hiring a head of financial planning. The candidate's CV lists a summa cum laude degree, and the HR team confirms it directly with the university registry before the offer is made.
Example
A corporate bank compares graduate applicants from five countries. Because the honours systems differ, the recruiter uses a conversion guide and also weighs each candidate's professional exam progress, so no one is favoured by labelling alone. The panel records its reasoning for each shortlisting decision, which makes the process fairer and easier to defend if a candidate asks why they were not selected.
Case study
Seen in the real world.
Calloway and Pryce is an illustrative, fictional audit practice that used to shortlist graduates almost entirely on degree honours. Its partners noticed that some top-honours graduates struggled with client work, while a few with lower grades but strong professional exam results thrived.
The head of recruitment reviewed three years of hires and found little link between honours alone and performance reviews. Candidates who passed their first professional exams on time and showed strong communication skills did better than those who merely held the top academic label.
In this illustrative case, the firm kept the honour as one of several screening points, but added a case exercise and structured references. The cost per hire rose by about $800, and the early resignation rate fell over the following two years, so the partners judged the extra checks worthwhile. They also began tracking which screening signals actually predicted strong first-year reviews, so the process could keep improving.
Watch out
Common mistakes.
- Assuming summa cum laude means the same thing at every university, when each institution sets its own cut-off and criteria.
- Treating the honour as proof of job performance, when it only reflects academic results in a particular programme.
- Accepting the claim without checking, when verification with the university is a normal part of hiring due diligence.
Questions
People also ask.
Is summa cum laude better than magna cum laude?
Yes, summa is the highest of the usual three Latin honours, though the grade needed to reach it differs between institutions.
Does a finance career require a Latin honour?
No, many successful accountants and finance leaders have no honours at all, and employers also look at professional qualifications and experience.
How is summa cum laude written on a CV?
It is usually written in lower case with the degree, for example "BSc in Accounting, summa cum laude", and it should be accompanied by the awarding university and year.
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