Honors Housing vs. Non-Honors Housing

paying4collegex4
Fri, 02 Oct 2015 01:28:50 +0000

The great thing about the Honors College at Alabama is that the level of involvement is completely up to the student. There really isn’t any effort to segregate the honors students from the rest of the population. As long as you are making at least some progress towards meeting the Honors College graduation requirements, you can pretty much just sit back and accept the HC registration priority if that is all that you want from the HC. Or you can become super involved – take advantage of all the activities that are announced in the weekly newsletter, run for office in the Honors College Assembly, go to the faculty coffees, set up lunches with profs through Out To Lunch, and generally have your life revolve around the Honors College. It is completely your choice. Most students fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.

As far as the dorm environment, one of my HC kids was in RCE and the other is in Pres. They have had roughly the same social experience in the dorm – which has been great. They both made a conscious effort to knock on doors, say hi in the elevator, hang out in the common areas and generally be social and both have ended up with a good network of male and female friends on their floor. (But as Chesterton points out, the student does have to make the effort. The development of friendships isn’t nearly as organic as it is in say Tutwiler where the doors are always open, pretty much everyone has the common experience of going through rush and most of the girls are Greek.)

There are a lot of HC kids who chose Pres because it is newer – so if you are trying to avoid other HC students, that isn’t necessarily going to work – almost a quarter of the incoming class is in the HC so not everyone fits in Ridgecrest. Honestly, I would say pick based on location and then make the effort to get to know people wherever you live.