<p>My only experience is with a freshman engineer, just starting final exam week. She took honors physics, which I highly recommend. It’s taught by the head of the honors college and he is beyond awesome. D met her best friends in that class, some of whom still don’t know what they’re majoring in, but they’re minoring in physics as a result of that class.</p>
<p>D also took the Fessenden Honors Engineering Program (FHEP), which is a year long seminar that replaces a freshman engrg seminar all engrg majors are required to take. She really liked FHEP a lot; there is a web page for it that can explain it better than I can. Plus, she took honors engrg analysis, which is a lot of matlab and computer programming stuff. Due to some peculiarities of her schedule she didn’t take honors calculus, but rather calculus 2 regular. I think at Pitt the honors calc is a combo of calc 1 and 2; anyway she took regular calc 2. There was an honors section of chemistry for engineers, but I don’t think it came with a lab, and she needed the lab for premed, so she took regular chem.</p>
<p>That seemed to satisfy her, and she never complained about large classes. Even her regular stuff like chemistry were apparently an ok size, and they have recitations, or small groups that meet separately with a TA grad student. She liked her TA’s a lot, altho’ some of her friends didn’t like theirs, so maybe she was lucky.</p>
<p>For electives she took a religion/philosophy class she loved 'cause she’d heard good things about the prof. Once again, I think the class was relatively small anyway, so while it wasn’t honors it didn’t need to be to be effective. Hope this helps. Maybe someone from another major will post.</p>
<p>I would highly recommend taking that honors physics 1 and 2 class, no matter what your intended major is (assuming you’ve got some science/math talent plus three dimensional thinking going for you). If you can handle it, that class is a true highlight of freshman year.</p>