Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi each present an annual award for the best Senior Honors Thesis, with a cash prize of $250 each. Students are nominated by their academic departments and attend the annual awards luncheon co-sponsored by Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Kappa Phi where the presidents of each chapter present a Best Thesis Award for their respective chapters.

2021 Award Winners

• Phi Beta Kappa: Lily Fisher (Sociology and Anthropology)
  Undocumented Lives: Exploring Previously Unknown Occupations Predating the Presbyterian Manse, Staunton, VA
  
  
• Phi Kappa Phi: Lillie Jacob (English)
  Drawn Queer: Queer Graphic Narratives as a Literary Movement

2020 Award Winners

• Phi Beta Kappa: Emily Barbaro (Political Science)
  Analyzing the Onset and Resolution of Nonstate Conflict in the Middle East & North Africa
  
  
• Phi Kappa Phi: Paulina Bauer (Biotechnology)
  Examining big tau's role in DNA protection with CRISPR-Cas9 induced tau knockouts

2019 Award Winners

• Phi Beta Kappa: Rachel Barborek (Biology)
  Detecting the Cold: Do Innexins Function in Cold
  
  
• Phi Kappa Phi: Rhys Frazier (English)
  How to Live: Lessons from old English and Old Norse/Icelandic Wisdom Literature

2018 Award Winners

• Phi Beta Kappa: Kelly Moss (Political Science)
  Nigerian Terror: The Rise of Boko Haram
  
  
• Phi Kappa Phi: Hannah Facknitz (History)
  Performing Authentic Savegery: National Myth-Making and Indigenous Survival at American World's Fairs, 1893-1904

2017 Award Winners

• Phi Beta Kappa: Madeline Johnson (Sociology)
  Queer University: An Ethnographic Case Study of the Trans Student Experience of College Campus Space
  
  
• Phi Kappa Phi: Naomi Gilbert (Biotechnology)
  Survey of microbial urea degrader diversity in two freshwater ecosystems: Lake Shenandoah and the Shenandoah River
  

2016 Award Winners

• Phi Beta Kappa: Kirstie Ann Thompson (Chemistry)
  The Effect of Hofmeister Series Counterions on the Colloidal and Antimicrobial Properties of Triple-Headed Cationic Amphiphiles

• Phi Kappa Phi: Meagan Riley (English)
  American Gothic Families: Identity and Kinship in the American Gothic Tradition
  

2015 Award Winners

• Phi Beta Kappa: Jacob Bosley (Political Science)
  Lexicons of Colonialism: A Grounded Theory Examination of Indian and Supreme Court Definitions of Sovereignty

• Phi Kappa Phi: Rosemary Girard (Writing, Rhetoric, and Technical Communication)
  The Professional Writer’s Many Personae: Creative Nonfiction, Popular Writing, Speechwriting, and Personal Narrative
  

2014 Award Winners

• Phi Beta Kappa: Matthew Dent (Chemistry)
  Understanding metal-organic framework assembly in hydrotris (1,2,4-triazolyl) borate materials

• Phi Kappa Phi: Andrea Morgan (Art History)
  After Rembrandt: Captain William Baillie and Print Culture in Eighteenth-Century London
  

2013 Award Winners

• Phi Beta Kappa: Jessica Holland (Biology)
  The Interaction of the Lethal Fungal Pathogen Batrachochytrium Dendrobatidis (Bd) and Combinations of Anti-Bd Bacterial Species

• Phi Kappa Phi: Caitlyn Chalfant and Molly Picard (both Intelligence Analysis)
  Weapons of Mass Destruction and America: Assessing the Risk of a Possible Future Scenario and Its Implications
  

2012 Award Winners

• Phi Beta Kappa: Matthew Wallace (Biology)
  Topographic and Patterned Axonal Projections in Control and Mutant Ephrin-B2 Mice Prior to the Onset of Hearing

• Phi Kappa Phi: Sam Lasky (International Affairs)
  Causes of US Humanitarian Intervention in the Post-Cold War Era