Honors Colleges

bclintonk
Sat, 27 Dec 2008 20:18:15 +0000

^Right, but by the time you’re in your junior and senior years at a place like Michigan, you can take graduate-level classes with top professors and top grad students in some of the top graduate programs in the nation. At least that was my experience at Michigan, where I spent my first two years doing small honors classes with other honors program students, living in honors housing, etc., then moved directly into small (< 20) upper-division and graduate-level classes in my major (philosophy) with one of the top philosophy faculties in the English-speaking world, ranked #4 at the time and currently ranked #3 by the Philosophical Gourmet. You’re right—it wasn’t comparable to an elite LAC experience becuase there’s no LAC in the country that can match the breadth, depth, and quality of the Michigan philosophy faculty. I don’t think I ever had a class with more than 25 students in my major, and only 3 or 4 large lecture classes outside my major—none of them required, all classes I chose to take because they were taught by some of the top people in their respective fields. By the time I was senior, most of my classmates were grad students in one of the most highly regarded graduate philosophy programs in the nation. It was an educational experience that at the time I truly believe could have been replicated only at Princeton and Harvard. Thatwassome years ago, but I believe the same holds true today.

I don’t say that’s possible in all programs at a place like Michigan. In extremely popular majors like poli sci, psych, or English, students take some large classes even at the upper division. But for a field like philosophy or classics, the Honors Program–>uppper division major route at Michigan is an outstanding educational opportunity that very, very few schools can match.