<p>My opinion: one honors class will not strongly affect your admissibility. Also, schools will not know what you did to earn the honors designation. Because the difficulty of honors courses vary so much class to class and school to school, your very challenging/time consuming honors course is weighted the same as someone else who just had to write a brief paper to get honors designation. </p>
<p>HOWEVER, it seems that this class would afford you a ton of really great experiences in higher education, peer interaction, and deeper understanding of the material. If you challenged yourself to take on two or three of the more engaging assignments (SCCUR presentation, math league, and the Putnam exam stand out) you would have a really great topic for your admissions essay, in which you could mention why you chose honors, the assignment you chose, and your experience/learning. Most of those assignments have a lot of merit and would really let you shine if you wholeheartedly pursued them and let the UCs know about it. </p>
<p>for the sake of honors alone, no, I don’t think it’s worth it. But you could REALLY make it worthwhile and get a lot of value from it. Because you feel confident you can meet the challenge, I think you should strongly consider it. </p>