Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Latin, literally "with highest praise."
Wiktionary
adv. With the highest of three degrees of praise, as noted on a diploma.
WordNet
adj. with highest honor; with the highest academic distinction; "a summa cum laude graduate"
adv. with highest honor; "he graduated summa cum laude"
Usage examples of "summa cum laude".
She later graduated summa cum laude from Harvard's home-study division and earned an advanced degree in Milieu law.
Returned from the brink, I was able to clear my summa cum laude head and begin work on the project that ultimately made me famous.
Gates graduated magna cum laude, Stowe summa cum laude, same graduating class.
Your way of solving the empty division problem was more visually dramatic and much more exciting than the methods used by the general who made summa cum laude.
The summa cum laude would have been enough to get her a job on Madison Avenue if her name hadn't been Sage.
True, they hadn't entered their respective fields with the idea of getting rich, but neither had they expected that a summa cum laude would take them about as far from campus as the nearest dry water hole.
Diploma (summa cum laude) with major in business and minor in Romantic languages.