<p>For 15 students, at this time Honors, Gemstone and Scholars can be confusing to understand.</p>
<p>The important thing to understand is when they ask on the application if you are willing to work in groups, your answer may impact you.</p>
<p>Our DS said no, I don’t want to. That immediately scratched him off of Gemstone. Gemstone requires this aspect to receive the citation.</p>
<p>He is in Scholars. He had IMHO strong stats. 1390 SAT, 34 ACT, 5 AP’s*, Jump start, top 10% class rank, 3.7+ uwgpa, 4.17 wgpa, NHS 3 yrs. EC’s including National Bronze Medalist Jr Olympics, State TKD CHamp, SR Lifeguard, volunteer, etc. He is OOS</p>
<p>*APUSH, APEURO, APGOVT, APENG. and AP LIT</p>
<p>Yet, that was not high enough for an intended Govt major to get Honors. I say this so people can understand that when they give their stats they don’t immediately think I am in like Flin for Honors.</p>
<p>“The important thing to understand is when they ask on the application if you are willing to work in groups, your answer may impact you.”</p>
<p>I’m confused though, because you don’t get admitted to Gemstone when you get accepted to the University. You get admitted to Honors, and then within the next month or so you decide your preferences out of the 5 Honors categories, Gemstone being one. Then eventually you’re told which Honors program you’re in. They try to give everyone their top choice but if there’s too many obviously then they need to look into each person more. I don’t recall being asked if I like to work in groups last year on the app, but if I was asked I’m pretty sure I said no. I was still admitted to Honors, and chose to be in University Honors, but if I wanted to I could’ve tried to be in Gemstone (not saying I would have been, but it’s not like I would’ve automatically been excluded just because of a question that had already been looked at when I got my admission to Honors).</p>
<p>"*APUSH, APEURO, APGOVT, APENG. and AP LIT</p>
<p>Yet, that was not high enough for an intended Govt major to get Honors. I say this so people can understand that when they give their stats they don’t immediately think I am in like Flin for Honors."</p>
<p>I’m a Journalism major and I took AP US, AP Gov, AP Bio, and AP Lit. 1300 SAT. I’m still seriously questioning how I got into Honors but regardless, does the type of AP’s you take in connection to your intended major really make that much difference? I never thought about that but maybe you’re right. I didn’t really do anything with writing though.</p>
<p>Bornin-I think the system has changed since I was admitted. </p>
<p>bulletandpima- First of all, I’m also a premed student who is ahead of the rest of my team in research experience. But so you don’t continue to tell prospective students wrong information: You seem to think that bio and engineering majors are taught about what we’re doing in classes. They aren’t. Everyone on the team does lit-review and other necessary background study during their sophomore year. Any person on the team in an unrelated major would finish sophomore year light years of head of most people in the related major who are not in Gemstone, and most of the specialized information that we need to know, a person would not normally learn until grad school. So the team learns it together.
Also, the majority of teams are divided into sub-teams. If someone is not interested in actual laboratory work, they will not do it. They’ll be in charge of doing something else. </p>
<p>Also your statement: “Imagine a Music major, how will do you think they will succeed as a JR at UMDCP who has not had a science class for 3 yrs, trying to remember polymers and lipids” is completely uninformed. First, if someone’s only interest was music, would they likely want to do group research? No. Second, do you think the person would ignore what is going on on the team for two years then suddenly try to remember what polymers or lipids are? If they did, they probably would have been kicked out of the program a while ago. And furthermore do you think that if this said person had a question that no one would answer it? It’s a team research project. They have to explain one concept to me, I’ll probably have to explain to them that every subject has a verb at some point. </p>
<p>Honestly your post goes against almost every principle Gemstone was founded on.</p>
<p>Bornin, I completely agree with your first paragraph … I’ve posted before that the system had changed, but I guess it wasn’t read … :(</p>
<p>As for OOS getting into Honors, … I understand that only so many OOS will be admited to the Honors college and as a result they have stats significantly above the mean vs. the IS. If b&p’s S was IS, I’m certain he would have been honors …</p>
<p>@b&p, “I do see your point, but what if you were a Music major?”</p>
<p>I’m a music major 
piano BA. I’m also premed and I chose not to do Gemstone because I don’t like teams. I DO plan to do research (biochem) however, and if I had decided to do Gemstone I’m certain I would have more than carried my own weight …</p>
<p>Yeah the system has definitely changed. They added 3 new Honors groups this year, so there are now 5. </p>
<p>“I understand that only so many OOS will be admited to the Honors college and as a result they have stats significantly above the mean vs. the IS. If b&p’s S was IS, I’m certain he would have been honors …”</p>
<p>I’m from New York, which only befuddles me even more about how I got into Honors lol.</p>
<p>^ hey, there’s something about you they REALLY liked! Are you in Denton?</p>
<p>Yeah I’m in Denton.</p>
<p>Where in New York? Of the New York people I know there’s a very large concentration of Long Island and Westchester. The city itself also has a good number of people.
Maybe they’re looking more at that? Like if you’re not from one of these places…I don’t know, just a theory.</p>
<p>I’m from Long Island.</p>