@PackMom Thank you for your story and for your son’s service.
Albert- I didn’t read through all the responses so I apologize in advance if I am repeating anything above.
Son2 graduated a year ago (4 years with 45 AP credits applied though that jsut made him graduate with about 180-190 credits as so much ijn engineering is mandatory and few (5 courses which are gen eds.)
He had no interest in accepting Honors program at any school it was offered to him. This was hte right decision.; Engineering is tough and you have enough work to do without adding anything. Because of his 45 credits he went in with freshman year, he already had high numbers for housing and priority class selection.
Son was inducted into Tau Beta Pi in his Junior year which is the National Engineering Honor Society and you need to be in the top 95 or 97% of you class. Yikes! It is prestigious. (regular honors program means you had high stats for the school you applied to and did some additional work). His college has a great fall job/internship engineering fair each year so that helped him secure summer paid internships and 3 job offers upon graduating. Also, was involved in AIAA the aerospace engineering club and competition and was on the board. Had paid research on campus as only undergrad in the post-grad program. Do what you can to build up your resume.
Son1 choose to do the Honors Program at his school. Had extra work, but he could handle it. Also 45 credits upon entering college so that left him 2.5 years to complete college. Double majored and had a minor and stayed all 4 years at our urging. (Full tuition merit so there was no rush to get out.) He was in a special program (top kids) where they don’t have to take any gen. eds and can fill up their schedule with what they are interested in. Worked out well for him.
Good luck to you.
@crazed Thank you so much for your input. I hope to be in AIAA too. I am going to Wichita State U in KS, where did your Son2 go? I think that I am pretty much convinced I won’t be shortchanging myself if I choose not to do Honors - there’s plenty of other ways to distinguish myself.
bump
One advantage is that you get an extra $500 per year if you’re in the Honors College.
http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=merit_scholarships&p=/honors_merit/
You get an Honors Living Learning Community, with a special lounge and activities.
http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=honors&p=/honorslivinglearningcommunityinformationlink/
As an engineering student with a high GPA requirement, priority registration would be a must - you can make sure you register for classes with good instructors or schedule your general education classes at convenient times around your engineering classes…
http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=honors&p=/honorsbenefits/
It doesnt look like the classes they offer are “extra” but replace the general education classes everyone’s got to take, and they offer “honors contracts” too, meaning that you can transform a regular class you’re taking into “Honors” by doing something more in-depth with the professor, writing a paper, leading a project… The obligation seems to be 1 Honors Class per semester, which would be very doable, especially if you take some engineering classes as “honors”.
I noticed, looking at the Housing brochures, that dinner is only served 4 nights a week and that there’s apparently nothing on the weekends… will your scholarship cover the extra meals? It also probably means there’s almost no one on campus from Friday afternoon till Monday - will you be able to go home every weekend, or do you have family/friends in town?
@MYOS1634 Check out post #15 - I don’t know that the priority registration will be too big of a deal for me. I also already have a few general eds done. I will ask about their program when I visit early next month.
re: food - Shocker Hall has breakfast-lunch-dinner M-F, “brunch” and dinner on the weekends. That is where I will be living at least my first semester and probably my first year. The only meal I would have to figure out would be weekend breakfast and probably their “Shocker dollars” can take care of that.
And no, I’m an OOS student, no family visits or anything on the weekend. I will enjoy my time on the nice, quiet campus and study so that I can keep that GPA. 
Good wrt the food - and you don’t need weekend breakfast (very few college students eat breakfast, but no one eats weekend breakfasts.)
Hopefully there’ll be movies and things going on in town. Ask how many students stay in Shocker Hall over the weekend (many may be Internationals, which will be interesting in itself for you, lots of cultural discoveries). Check the library schedule, too, as well as the lab openings (when you visit for Honors, ask whether Honors students have swipe cards to work in the labs on weekends or in the evenings).
I saw #15 but I’m not convinced that priority registration isn’t a good perk to have.
DO check that the Honors classes offered count for the Engineering prereqs you still have to complete though - if they don’t, then I’d see your dilemma, but if they do, I don’t see what the problem is, especially since Honors students tend to have their best grades in their Honors Classes, so you’d likely pick up a few A’s in lively discussion-based seminars. Of course you may think of your gen-eds as the classes when you’ll sleep at the back of the lecture hall, but you could think of them as an easier way for you to get As (since they’ll be general classes, kind of like taking “discover the wonderful world of numbers” but for history, geography, etc., they’re much easier than specialty classes).
OP - @MYOS1634 raises some points worth your consideration. If the Honors program adds no further obligations to your plate, but comes with some valuable benefits, why not partake?
Investigate the burdens of the Honors program. Maybe it’s nothing more than taking the “honors” versions of the same classes you would have to take anyway, and you might find that the grades tend to be higher in those classes instead of lower.
Also, don’t discount the value of priority registration. As MYOS1634 points out, it may be more than just getting to pick the best class times for your schedule. On every campus there are professors to avoid - grade killers or terrible bores or just plain bad teachers - and you would be able to do that with priority registration.
http://webs.wichita.edu/depttools/depttoolsmemberfiles/honors/Spring%202015%20Honors%20Courses.pdf
Those are the courses offered as Honors courses.
I should probably ask the college this, but what if I got admitted to the Honors college but decided not to do it?
You can always drop out of Honors after a semester.
There aren’t many classes indeed! Based on the page you linked to, there are special internships open only to Honors Students, and essentially it looks like the Honors “classes” really are getting credit for a co-op only open to Honors Students…
And remember that they offer the Honors Contract option, meaning that you can transform any class of your choice into a Honors Class.
hey albert -
my son will be a freshman this fall. he has a tuition-scholarship to our state school. We went through this whole Honors trackl with him. He is NOT doing honors. 1) he has to keep a 3.5 grade point for his scholarship and will focus on his classes. 2) we asked a relative who’s in human resources for a big company. she didnt think the honors program would make or break him when it comes to jobs. 3) He did not want to do it. He’s been around IB kids for the last 4 years and wanted a break. We are sort of wishing he would . . . but its his choice. good luck to you . . . we have a friend looking at WSU next year for engineering too.
@bgbg4us Thank you. What do you mean by “He’s been around IB kids for the last 4 years and wanted a break.”? I’m not sure what IB is, sorry. I like and click with people that are into technical stuff and that are fascinated by things in the sky or things that go into the sky.
IB stands for the International Baccalaureate program. It’s a very demanding high school program. My friend’s kid did it. She had no life.
Okay, thanks @PackMom. Is there a certain type of kid that does IB?
180+ credits implies that he attended a quarter system school.
Top 95% means that only the bottom 5% are ineligible? Doesn’t seem right… http://www.tbp.org/about/InfoBook/membership.cfm says that the top 1/8 of engineering juniors and top 1/5 of engineering seniors are eligible.
Usually a high performing student who is relatively well rounded academically at a high school where the IB courses are the most rigorous courses available. It has a reputation of being very high workload, although the credit and placement in college for IB HL test scores is not necessarily any higher than for AP test scores in the same subjects.
@ucbalumnus I think that poster’s math was a little backwards, but I know what they mean. Thanks for the clarification on IB. What are your thoughts on the original topic?
It looks like there are several honors options:
- Emory Lindquist Honors Scholars (12 credits)
- Honors Interdisciplinary Tracks (12 credits)
- University Honors Minor (both of the above = 24 credits)
- Honors Baccalaureate (University Honors + thesis + 36 credits across two or three majors)
- Departmental Honors (aerospace engineering offers such a program)
http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=honors&p=/2014/honorscollegecurriculum/
Which one(s) are you considering? It looks like either of the first two would not be too hard to complete, if the honors courses could also be used to fulfill major or breadth requirements. Obviously, the honors in your major department is another possible option. But the options requiring more credits of honors courses may be harder to fit into your schedule.
@ucbalumnus Not sure. I have some info on the departmental honors for aerospace, but I’m not sure what it all means. I’ll have to ask about it when we tour.
To update the people on a few things about the scholarship - there has been only one person they have given the scholarship to that has lost it, but that had to do with music/band stuff, not related to engineering. I don’t know how many of the people that had the scholarship were engineering majors, but I’m sure some were.