Honors College

lkf725
Tue, 04 Jul 2006 23:35:48 +0000

weenie,
Yes, many engineering students are in the honors program and take their engineering courses as honors. There is even a special honors program for engineers (Fessenden Honors in Engineering Program). My son took some classes as honors, but not all.

I liked the Freshman Seminar. Once each week they have one large group meeting where they have speakers and discuss the different engineering disciplines. Then once per week they go to a small group meeting with about 12 kids. They do fun stuff of their choice with an older engineering student (cards, movies, sports, dining, etc). This is a nice comfortable way to get close to a few students and have an older student to ask for advice.

Kids mostly stick around on the weekends, although some do work or go home to visit (not every weekend though).

The classes are of varying sizes. I think most of the freshman classes have a larger lecture accompanied by smaller recitations and labs. At the upper levels, I think they are all quite small.

I really liked that they had to do alot of writing. During the second semester, they even participate in a freshman engineering conference where they research and write a big paper and do a 15 minute powerpoint presentation on their findings.

I think Pitt cares quite a lot about the success of their students, as shown by the peer mentoring program. The kids easily find support if they live in SPACE or Honors housing. (I think the SPACE floors even have a scheduled homework help time right in the dorm). There are many opportunites for academic help, both formal and informal. As I recall, their retention rate is about 90%, which is very high for engineering.

Regarding money, I’m not sure I can say. My son got one scholarship from the Honors College and another one from the Engineering School. I really don’t know what the average award is.

Overall, I liked Pitt more than I thought I would. My son found many motivated and very intelligent students. Yet they were really nice and down to earth. Pitt offers lots of academic opportunities and tons of recreational things to do on campus or in the city. Maybe my lukewarm feeling about the honors college results from the fact that the engineering school already does so much for the students.