<p>First-Year Fellows and the Honors Program are both run by the Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence, which serves as a physical “home” to many of the university’s academic enrichment programs (such as the Honors program, the undergraduate research office, and the Robertson program).</p>
<p>The Honors Program includes some co-curricular social and academic programming, but its key feature is priority registration for honors courses, which are small seminars taught by distinguished faculty. </p>
<p>First-Year Fellows is basically the reverse emphasis: it includes a guaranteed seat in one of your top choice first year seminars, but its key feature is co-curricular social and academic programming (see [The</a> First Year Fellows in the James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence](<a href=“http://johnstoncenter.unc.edu/index.php/jcue-programs/first-year-fellows.html]The”>http://johnstoncenter.unc.edu/index.php/jcue-programs/first-year-fellows.html)). The most prominent such event this past year was probably a private tea with Nicholas Kristoff, who was on campus giving a lecture.</p>
<p>First-Year Fellows was new this year so it’ll be interesting to see how it progresses. Invitations to the two programs are not mutually exclusive – you can be invited to one, both, or neither – but in general, it seems like most people are only invited to one or the other (and the vast majority of admitted applicants are invited to neither).</p>