CAS Presidential Honors Scholars Program

shades_children
Tue, 04 Apr 2006 09:56:30 +0000

Your trips occur during your first and second years. First year was at the end of Christmas Break and we went to Florence, Italy. Got to check out NYU’s estate over there, went to see “David” and other famous works of art, ate great food, etc. Second year there will be a number of trips to different places - all occur over Spring Break, and you decide which you’d like to go on. I went to Madrid, but other people went to Ireland, London, Berlin, and Paris. The trips are Europe-centric, so I hope they start including Asian sites.

As for more about the program requirements, every semester they hold a series of lectures. As a freshman, you must attend three - I think you need attend one less as a sophomore - but they don’t take attendance. Attending lectures can be a pain if you have 5 PM classes, but you can go to other non-Scholars lectures. You’re expected to write a one-page, single-spaced reaction paper to each lecture. In addition, you need to attend meetings every other week, which can be really slow and boring, and do 15 hours of community service, which you’ll also write a one-page, single-spaced reaction paper for. This being said, I think they’ll let slip-ups slide - spring semester of my sophomore year, I didn’t write enough reactions and I turned them in late. (It was a bad semester for me.) I was pretty sure I was gonna get the boot, but no one ever said anything to me.

You also need to maintain a 3.7 GPA, which can be challenging. When people get kicked out, it’s because they dropped below 3.7. Again, second semester of sophomore year, my GPA went down to 3.692, and I got worried, but I was told that .008 wasn’t a problem - now, if it had been 3.5, I don’t know.

I wouldn’t say there are “oh by the ways” - they’re pretty upfront with you about what you need to do. It can just be a pain in the butt when you have fifty bazillion other things to do.

It’s worth it for the trips - I promise. :D