Honors or naw?

FLhsMomof4
Thu, 09 Apr 2015 12:02:12 +0000

My son is attending USF this Fall, is a National Merit Scholarship Finalist, and is turning down the Honors College’s offer. He would get $500 per semester, which is their standard scholarship. There are several reasons. The scholarship is not that great, especially considering that they require their honors students to stay in the dorms. The cost of the dorms will be greater than the scholarship… Another reason is that the amount of work that is involved in being in the honors college, especially on the last semester(s) when they require you to write a thesis. If you are in a highly competitive field such as premed or prelaw, what matters most is your GPA and the score you receive on the MCAT or LSAT. If you are spending your time working on a thesis or extraneous work on honors classes, then you are taking away from the time when you could be focusing on relevant subjects, internships and other activities, making sure you have a high enough GPA, and preparing for the tests. If you graduate Cum Laude or Summa Cum Laude, you will have that on your diploma, and it will be proof enough that you are an outstanding student.