In what is believed to be the only undergraduate honors program of its type in the U.S., the examiners -- selected by Swarthmore professors -- will sit with their assigned Swarthmore students, one-on-one, and probe their mastery of their major subject for 45 minutes. The students' performance in that oral exam and on an earlier written exam will determine whether they graduate with honors, high honors, or highest honors.

The 174 outside examiners being used this year -- the most ever in the 82-year history of the program -- will test 128 students, who represent about one-third of the graduating class. Swarthmore had to increase the number of examiners from last year's 130 because of the increasingly sophisticated work of the students, all of whom will meet with multiple scholars.

"What happens between the examiner and Swarthmore honors student is an intellectual dialogue, an in-depth probing of what the student has said in his or her written exam," says Craig Williamson, an English literature professor and Chaucer scholar who coordinates the Honors Program. "Some aspects of what happens here would be familiar to Chaucer, whose clerk of the Canterbury Tales studied much the same way in the 14th century. But because of the way we have adapted an old program to new directions in intellectual life, the Honors Program is also quite modern and innovative."

The past few years have been a particularly robust time for Honors, the College's signature program since its creation by then-President Frank Aydelotte in the 1920s.

Aydelotte modeled it after the Oxford tutorial system, which he had experienced while studying as a Rhodes Scholar in England. After thriving for decades and catapulting Swarthmore to its status as an academic powerhouse, Honors began declining in popularity in the early 1990s, to the point that just 10 percent of the graduating class enrolled in Honors in 1996.

At that point, the Swarthmore faculty instituted a series of changes designed to attract more students to the program, primarily by making it more flexible and responsive to student interest in foreign study, double majors, cross-disciplinary study, and other new directions in the curriculum. The restructuring has proved successful; participation has steadily increased to the point that more than a third of this year's graduating class is in Honors.

At Swarthmore's expense, the outside examiners travel to the College from institutions around the country; to ensure the constant influx of fresh perspectives, the program limits an outside examiner's participation to two consecutive years. Each student is tested by four examiners, three in the major and one in the minor. "Because more and more students are pursuing interdisciplinary work and individual research projects, we need to bring to the College an increasing number of examiners each year," Williamson says.

Next week's oral exams conclude a two-year process in which the Swarthmore honors students have taken a series of seminars and classes, often combined with an independent thesis, a creative work, and/or foreign study. Their written honors exams -- designed by the outside examiners -- test material covered over the entire four semesters, as does the oral.

The run-up to Honors exams is known as an anxious but stimulating time for participating students. Those going through it cite a saving grace; following a long-standing Swarthmore tradition, the students tend to help one another prepare rather than compete to out-do one another. As one recent alumnus said at a forum hosted on campus, "You learn so much more by talking through your ideas with other students than by staring at your notebook."

The actual experience of sitting down with the oral examiner and exchanging ideas is always challenging and often surprisingly pleasant, as many attest. "The students sometimes get anxious beforehand, but they come out of these oral exams exhilarated by the exchange," Williamson says. "It's a thrill to have the chance to test their ideas against the scholar whose books they've been reading."

As one recent Honors graduate said it, "Honors at Swarthmore is one of the few academic programs that gives undergraduates a chance to have a one-on-one interaction with accomplished scholars. I think it's a rare privilege."