Election

Election Requirements

Membership in the society is open only to students enrolled in the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Science and Technology, and Art History majors (only) at Tyler. Eligibility for membership is considered once per year in the Spring. At this time, juniors and seniors who are candidates for the BA or BS degree are eligible for consideration if their undergraduate records fulfills the following minimum requirements:

  1. The candidate shall be majoring in a department or program in those colleges and be taking a course program expected to include at least 95 hours of letter-graded liberal arts and sciences courses (including courses transferred to Temple as arts and sciences courses) among the hours required for the BA or BS degree.
  2. During the semester in which eligibility is considered:
    1. The candidate must either have completed or be in the process of completing 60 semester hours of courses in CLA or CST at Temple University (students transferring to Temple from a college housing a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa will have CLA- or CST-equivalent courses counted as if they were taken at Temple);
    2. The candidate must have taken no fewer than 12 semester hours per semester for at least 4 semesters that may include the current semester and/or two consecutive summer sessions;
    3. The candidate must have completed or be enrolled in 2 full-time semesters at one of the Philadelphia campuses of the University.
  3. For election as a junior, the candidate shall have completed no fewer than 75 nor more than 89 semester hours of college work. The caliber of the candidate’s work should be of exceptional distinction, including, for all graded work in CLA/CST courses, a GPA of at least 3.80. The minimum CLA/CST GPA needed for a candidate to be considered for election as a senior is 3.50. Candidates who have achieved this minimum CLA/CST GPA at Temple and who have transferred to Temple 30 or more semester hours of course work will have their CLA/CST GPA recalculated to include grades received at the transfer institution(s) in liberal arts and sciences equivalent courses.
  4. Candidates shall have demonstrated knowledge of mathematics and of a foreign language appropriate for a liberal education.Candidates shall have completed at least one college-level mathematics course. Courses considered to be college-level mathematics courses include Mathematics 0823, 0824, and 1011 (C055) or above and Statistics 1001 (C011) and 1102 (C012). Other courses may be considered to be college-level mathematics courses after review by the PBK selection committee. The PBK selection committee has sole discretion in determining appropriateness of courses not identified above.Candidates shall also have completed at least one semester of a foreign language at the intermediate level or the equivalent. At Temple, the intermediate I level is numbered 1003 in all language departments except Critical Languages.
  5. Weight shall be given to the breadth of the program of each candidate as shown by the number, variety, and level of CLA/CST courses taken outside the major. Weight shall also be given to the balance and proportion in the candidate’s degree program as a whole.

Please note that meeting these requirements does not guarantee election. Each candidate’s record is carefully reviewed by the chapter membership committee. Election depends on a variety of other factors, including size of the graduating class.

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