<p>One more comment about Honors in general. My older daughter went into UCSB as a first year honors student and promptly lost it after year one due to changing majors from Sociology to BioPsych. She’s doing well now but UCSB requires a very high GPA to hold onto honors. A letter grade of B here and there drops you out of the program. UCSC’s GPA requirement is somewhat lower. </p>
<p>The very big advantage to honors at UCSB is priority registration. Daughter is currently crashing multiple classes to try and get her major classes. She had planned on graduating a year early, however getting those classes is hard to do. Honors would sure come in handy right now. </p>
<p>From the letter that I attached above, it looks as though UCSC may use priority registration as a “carrot” also. It’s a really good carrot that you don’t know you want until you don’t have it. :)</p>
<p>The other difference that I see between UCSB and UCSC honors is that UCSC seems to be promoting the program as enrichment to a quality education. UCSB seems to approach it from an achievement angle. They basically make you jump through some rather uninteresting educational hoops to hang onto the honor whereas UCSC seems to make faculty available and advertises it as an academic opportunity with educational benefits for interested and interesting students as opposed to just being a resume builder.</p>