Honors programs at big universities

Mom2aphysicsgeek
Thu, 05 Jun 2014 13:03:41 +0000

I think the premise that students from honors colleges self-select into only a few majors is a generalization. I would suspect that how an honors college functions, the supports in place and how they benefit the students would have more influence over remaining in the honors college than just major.

Some honors colleges have specialized programs within the honors college that appeal to a wide range of students pursuing very different career paths. UA has UFE which is geared toward leadership, CBHP which is geared toward research, STEM MBA which allows STEM majors to earn their MBA during a 5th yr, dept honors (varies by dept), etc.

The comment on the thousands of avg students populating the rest of the campus reminds me of an article on gifted students. It doesn’t state anything beyond the obvious, but sometimes simple reality can be missed.



Those of us who managed sky-high SAT scores at 13 were 20 times as likely as the average American to get a doctorate; let’s say, being charitable, that we’re 100 times as likely to make a significant scientific advance. Since we’re only 1 in 10,000 of the U.S. population, that still leaves 99% of scientific advances to be made by all those other kids who didn’t get an early ticket to the genius club. We geniuses aren’t going to solve all the riddles.** Most child prodigies are highly successful—but most highly successful people weren’t child prodigies.**

This can be a hard lesson for the prodigies themselves. **It is natural to believe that the just-pubescent children on the mathletic podium next to you are the best, the ones who really matter. And for the most part, my fellow child stars and I have done very well. But the older I get, the more I see how many brilliant people in the world **weren’t Doogie Howser-like prodigies; didn’t shine in Math Olympiad; **didn’t go to the inner circle of elite colleges. **I’m embarrassed that I didn’t understand at 13 that it would be this way. But when they keep telling you you’re the best, you start to believe you’re the best.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/the-wrong-way-to-treat-child-geniuses-1401484790?tesla=y&mod=trending_now_3

I think the idea that only the students at the elite colleges have what it takes to achieve high levels of academic success is similar to the attitude expressed in that article.

All the hardworking, academically strong, future-changing individuals are not restricted to populating a small handful of elite colleges, especially when that education is not automatically funded but dependent on individual circumstances. A lot of them are at lower level state colleges shining where they were planted. And a lot of those future highly successful people may be in the general population on college campuses and not even in an honors college. ;)