Grand Challenges vs Explore vs Honors Program Living Learning Communities

InPursuit
Tue, 19 Feb 2019 23:17:25 +0000

I participated in the honors program shortly after it was established and before Tech offered the Explore or the Grand Challenges programs. These types of programs generally attract very driven and interesting people, at least from an academic perspective. As others have noted, pretty much all students at Tech are very smart, but I did feel that students in the honors program were, on average, notably more curious and willing to explore ideas and experiences both inside and outside of the classroom. It was a great group of people to live and study with freshman year and a lot of the people in the program will go on to do some pretty special things, even when compared to the already exceptional student body at Tech as a whole. The facilities themselves are not going to be fancy, so don’t expect more luxurious accommodations like some schools might offer to students in their honors programs.

I really enjoyed the honors classes, especially the special topics courses that were offered. All my honors courses were taught by professors who were passionate about teaching and were conducted in a much more intimate setting than the standard lecture hall format. This allowed for students to more fully explore the material and to develop stronger relationships with the professors, which can come in handy if you want to get involved in research or if you will eventually need recommendations for graduate and/or professional schools. That said, most of your classes will not be through the program and you can obviously get involved with research and meet professors in other ways.

I would recommend the honors program and I assume the other programs have similar merits, but I also don’t think you would necessarily have a markedly different overall experience at Tech if you decided not to participate. Like most things, you can get a lot out of it if you want, but you’re not going to have an exceptional experience at Tech simply because you were in one of these programs.