High end college vs. honors program at state college?

websensation
Fri, 16 Feb 2018 02:24:38 +0000

@sevmom As CA residents, dutifully applied to some UCs (It’s just one application with a separate payment for each UC so it’s really one application), including UCLA/Berkeley. Didn’t apply to Pomona or Claremont LACs because our kid didn’t like small schools which seemed smaller than his high school. Applied to two Honors Colleges which were among tops in two particular fields of studies to take advantage of NMF status (big merit money due to NMF) and as a good option. Actually, the UC applications and Honors College applications had to be submitted BEFORE we ever heard from Stanford – because you can’t really count on getting into Stanford. The order of acceptances were chronologically: Honors Colleges, Stanford REA and then UCs. Stanford was the only “reach” school; did not apply to any other reach school because frankly it was only reach school he wanted to apply to. UCLA/Berkeley were I thought “match” schools. Then Honors Colleges were “safety” schools. But ultimately, took a gap year then Stanford route. Those were the only schools (3 applications plus one sheet of info submission) our kid applied to. One Honors College application wasn’t really an application at all; we just had to fill out one page and supply evidence of NMF status and then full cost scholarship was offered for 5 years! If you are curious to know, it was UNLV Honors Program, and we applied there because it had one of the best Hotel Management and Hospitality Program in the country. Univ of South Carolina Honors application was actually lengthy but we applied for Honors International Business Program. Univ of South Carolina actually invited us to some nice steak restaurant, so it was free steak dinner to listen to Honors College and merit scholarship, so we attended the dinner event. If he did not get into Stanford, there was some chance he might have gone to Univ of South Carolina Honors IB major with a minor in language or International Relations route. We chose Hotel Management and IB as two potential areas because my kid’s skills and interest in languages; those were areas we thought his multi-language speaking skills could help.

I never looked into Honors Colleges until our kid got NMF status, so I thought it would be wise for me to have him apply to one or two Honors Colleges which had strong majors related to his language skills/interest.