Honor Residence Halls

wageoghe
Thu, 08 Jan 2009 13:24:07 +0000

This may be late for navarre1 who asked about advantages of the Honors College, but here goes…

Our daughter has been accepted as a Presidential Scholar and has been invited to apply (which she did) for an Elite scholarship. We went down to the Presidential Scholars day back in November.

Part of the Presidential Scholars day included a panel for parents. On the panel were the dean(?) of the Honors College, representives from financial aid, study abroad, residence halls, and, maybe the most interesting to me, was the guy in charge of “Prestigious Scholarships”.

The prestigious scholarships guy’s job is to help Auburn students (not just Honors College students) get “prestigious” scholarships to grad school (like Rhodes Scholar, Goldwater, etc). He really pushed living on campus and being in honors as increasing your chances at getting the top scholarships. Part of the thinking is that living on campus you will have a better chance at becoming involved in extracurricular activities and, maybe, leadership opportunities. Honors college is similar - more chances for ECs.

As with the undergrad application process (particularly for selective colleges and for highly selective scholarships), ECs can make a big difference. He made a big point about a recent student who had top-notch grades who was trying to get one of the prestigious scholarships. He has a pretty good chance, but if it comes down to recommending that guy over someone with equivalent grades, but that was also in the Honors College and/or lived on campus, he felt that the Honors College/on campus person would probably have an advantage. The assumption was that the Honors College/on campus person would have had more extracurriculars (the non-Honors College guy had zero ECs at Auburn).

So, for prestigious scholarships after graduation, Honors College and living on campus seem to be pluses.

As far as Honors College while at Auburn (and maybe you are not intersted in grad school, or don’t know if you are), AUlostchick and Granny listed several.

Another point from the head of the Honors College is there is currently not a high retention rate for upper classmen in the Honors College. He said that they are trying to figure out exactly why and take steps to increase retention. It is not that people are failing out, rather, they are opting to not participate after sophomore year (maybe freshmen year too, but he seemed to distinguish between Fr/So and Ju/Sr). One major thought that is that students are leary of “extra” work that might be required in Honors classes while at the same time working on the upper level classes for the major.

He tried to emphasize that there should not be “more” work required in Honors classes, rather it should be “different” work. With top-notch professors (who supposedly chomp at the bit to be able to teach honors sections) I could imagine that they could certainly give much more in-depth information or maybe veer off into their own specialty areas. He also said that the Honors College keeps close tabs on the professors, particularly ones that might not have taught Honors before, to ensure that they do not go overboard with the amount of work required. I got the impression that the idea is that there should not be much more of a time commitment for an Honors section of a class than there would be for a “normal” section. An Honors section is probably supposed to be more of a challenge than a “normal” section (to make it more “interesting”), but, at the same time, if you are in Honors, you are apparently a high achiever anyway.

Enough with the classes… I guess that another potential advantage of the Honors College is the chance to be part of a “community” (cue the sappy music!) You will be part of a cohort of people that share some similarities and common interests/experiences. Maybe you will be able to connect more easily with all of the other “smart” kids that you will be having class and living with. If you are in a freshman honors history class with 20 other students, not only will you probably have a chance to interact more with a real professor, but you will be more likely to get to know a large percentage of the students in your class.