Honors College

mercymom
Mon, 17 Jul 2006 16:27:40 +0000

Don’t worry so much about the Honors College. Is this your first child going to college? For me, it’s no. 2, so I am not nearly as frantic, except that the first one is on the other side of town at big state u., and this one is going 1200 miles away. I’m more worried about logistical stuff than how good the honors college is.

Child no. 1 is in the local honors college and it’s a lot more “closed off” if you will from the rest of the university than Pitt’s. They have their own dorm and you need an ACT 30 with a 30 in English to get in. If you’re not in, you can’t take an “honors” course. You are living and going to class with some extremely bright kids. BUT…

The day to day life is still what your kid makes it to be. They only need a minimum of 6 units/semester of honors to stay “in” and some (like mine) take the bare minimum. Some (like mine) are only in it to get the better dorm and priority registration, which is a really good plum at a mega-university. As they get older and move to a frat house or apt., then they don’t care about the dorm so much and also their priority registration doesn’t matter as much (jr/sr status takes over) and then they decide to drop out of honors (like mine!). We also thought that all the social life we thought was in the honors college wasn’t actually there, but then found out that (1) a lot of the kids that put that together had graduated and (2) our kid was hanging out with the greeks and wasn’t going to the honors college stuff.

The deal is they grow up and you can’t control them forever. If they want the things you want they will find them and do them. If the opportunities are there the child can take advantage of them…or not.

We did Pittstart in June and were very impressed. Child no. 2 is in engineering and we got to meet with their advisor who was awesome. That lady deserves a raise, and if they’re all like that you have nothing at all to worry about. Our kid is going on some kind of Chancellor’s retreat before school starts and there is also some kind of honors housing retreat too. Once again what I like is not so much that it’s honors but we will move in early and avoid the crush. Having been there and done that, freshmen move in day is no picnic (here at least). Also, child no. 2 is going to be in an honors engineering seminar and honors physics and from what the upperclassmen who led us around had to say, I think there will be all the stimulation someone adjusting to being 1200 miles from home in a totally different climate needs with the schedule they got.

As for peers, there was a kid in our kids advising group who had turned down MIT to go to Pitt. Also lots of multiple AP kids (much to the advisor’s dismay apparently - they were supposed to wait until later in the summer - oh well, she handled it like a pro). We turned down Rice engineering and UofC to go to Pitt.

But here’s the thing. If the most important thing to my child was to go to a school where 75% of the freshmen were the valedictorian and an average ACT is a 33, then maybe she should have gone to Rice. But even aside from her scholarship to Pitt, and it was a tough decision, but my child had a friend from her school who went to Rice last year and was miserable. She was kind of the Elle Woods of Rice - massively brilliant but very girly. She came home for Christmas w/o a single friend at Rice, not one. No one would be her friend and she was miserable. She is now at another school.

The way I see it is that Pitt is more the real world. They are a good school who is there for everyone and they give everyone a chance to succeed. There are a million opportunties at Pitt. Like the earlier poster said, all you have to do is make the effort to go and get them. This is college. The professor isn’t going to force you to go to the dinner where you have deep discussions. Pitt isn’t going to force you to sign up for honors classes or do the work once you’re in them. The coop office isn’t going to come get you out of your dorm room and drive you to the job interview.

It’s not going to be easy mom, but you’ve got to take a deep breath and let go. If you’ve done a good job so far, all will be well. Hey, my older kid may not be taking any honors at all next year, but she’s got a 4.0 and hasn’t been any trouble at all for two years, and she’s got grad school in the crosshairs. It could be a whole lot worse.