My rank is 10 out of 100 but I haven't been awarded Cum Laude. If Cum Laude is awarded to the top 10% of students in their cohort, why haven't I been awarded Cum Laude?
Your cohort size is 100 and this number represents the total number of students who are being considered for a Cum Laude award, based on Cum Laude threshold mark for their cohort. If all the students in a cohort of 100 have an overall weighted mean mark and a rank, 10 students in the cohort will be awarded Cum Laude.
However, there may be some students in the cohort whose overall weighted mean mark hasn’t been calculated because they haven’t achieved enough credits to be awarded a classified Bachelor’s or Undergraduate Master’s degree so they cannot be assigned a rank. As the top 10% of students can only be selected from the list of students with an overall weighted mean mark and a rank, if the number of students in the cohort whose overall weighted mean mark and rank have been calculated is 80, eight students will be awarded Cum Laude.
The rank is out of the number of students in the cohort rather than the number of students whose rank has been calculated as this is fairer to the students with lower rankings and a more accurate reflection of their academic performance within their cohort.