Dad2

Honors and Course are both top-notch: Course might in general permit more exposure to other non-major disciplines (say the physics major who'd also like to sample music history, religion, etc. before an exclusively scientific focus in graduate or professional school) whereas the intensive seminar format of Honors permits fewer courses per semester. In most departments, students choose not so much based on merit as prefered mode of education.

pchan406

Wow, I didn't expect a school like Swarthmore that is already so competitive to get into to have an honors course track....how is one admitted to the program and what exactly does it entail? I was admitted early write and they didn't say anything about it, and just want to know if that means I didn't make the cut for honors requirements. I'm having a hard time finding information about it on the Swat site.

nngmm

Swarthmore College | Academics | Honors Program

About 1/3 of students do the Honors. To be accepted into honors program you have to have a certain GPA in your intended major and overall (it varies by department, but usually is about 3.3-3.5, I think) when you are applying for major in the spring of your sophomore year. Some classes could be a prerequisite (again, it depends on the major), but usually those are intro classes that would have been taken anyway.

If you look at any department's web page it will have info on it's honors program.

Dad2

Students choose around the time that they declare their majors (i.e. sophomore year). To reiterate, this is not an "honors college" program within an already elite school, it is a choice of whether to do course work in the junior and senior years vs. fewer classes in seminar format (and with an external examiner at the end of senior year). In general, equally bright/talented student can choose either route and thrive.

nngmm

Students also can switch from honors to course at any time if they find that they don't like the honors format, or decide to switch majors at the last moment, or for any other reason.

The application to the honors program is not "competitive" (you don't compete with anyone for a spot, and the number of students doing honors varies between departments and from year to year).

Honors students get the preference in signing up for honors seminars. Some honors seminars are open only to honors students, others are open to everyone, but the honors students get to pick first. (Maybe that's the "preferential treatment" some of the students/ alums on this forum are complaining about.)

momof3sons

My '07 grad son (currently home on break from grad school) says that the Honors Program is pretty self-selective. Each department has it's own criteria for entrance, but S says that it's pretty flexible. There is more work if you are in the Honors Program in preparing for Honors Exams at the end of senior year. While 2/3 of his senior class was hanging out for the last week or so, his 1/3 of the class was studying their collective butts off for their oral and written Honors finals. He thought it was all worth it.
pchan, if you decide to do Honors and are accepted by your intended major department, you take 4 Honors Seminars during the course of your junior and senior year. These are double credit courses, so that, for instance, if you took 2 Honors Seminars second semester junior year, that would be the equivalent of 4 classes. In my S's freshman and sophomore years at Swat he took a very wide variety of classes including courses in astrophysics, physics, chem, math, religion, history,political science, philosophy and I'm sure there are more I can't think of at the moment. There are plenty of opportunities to explore many departments and meet your intended major's requirements.

interesteddad

For the most part, it's not really "competitive" to get into the Honors option. It's just a choice you make depending on the department and the curriculum you want to follow.

The Honors program is probably the biggest reason that Swarthmore developed a reputation for academic excellence. It was started in the 1920s by the President of the College who had been in charges of the Rhodes Scholar program in the United States.

The structure of the Swarthmore Honors program was for students to concentrate in a series of very small Honor Seminars -- just a few students and a Professor, meeting once a week.

Until just a few years ago Honors work wasn't even graded. You graduated with Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors.

The endgame of the Honors track is usually a senior thesis or project. Then you are given written and oral exams in your field by a panel of outside professors and experts who come to Swarthmore from other colleges for a week in May to give exams to Honors students. These outside examiners determine honors, high honors, or highest honors.

The honors program is a very rigorous academic experience. In addition, you have had a hundred or more visiting examiners experiencing Swarthmore and Swarthmore students each year for the last eighty years and taking back positive impressions of Swarthmore's academics to their home universites and grad schools.

Tila Tequila

bump

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momof3sons

Tila Tequila,
Was there a particular reason you bumped this thread at this point? Do you have a particular question. I'd be happy to try to answer it.