Kansas Honors College

Xtrasparklesplz
Wed, 03 Aug 2011 23:59:33 +0000

I’m a current student in the honors program at KU. It’s pretty much the best thing ever at KU for smart students. At KU, there’s a lot of diversity in the academic backgrounds of the students, so the honors program really helps honors students feel challenged in college.

Honors classes are a LOT of fun. I was going to take regular biology last spring, but switched into honors biology after seeing how many people were asleep in the regular biology class (it was 8:00, so fair) I LOVED my honors biology class (BIOL 151) with a professor who was actually interesting and friendly and a great resource on campus. I have very little biology background, and I didn’t feel it was comparatively any more difficult than BIOL 150 (regular biology)

I’m not sure about the honors seminars, as they’re a new thing this year for honors students. I know my tutorial (quantum mechanics, philosophy, and fiction) was super awesome and a great way to meet other honors freshmen. Also, my advisor was my professor for that class, so I got to know him better, and he got to know me better, which means better letters of rec in the future.

The Honors program at KU also is involved with a lot of honor societies and scholarships at the national level, so they are always around to help out with that sort of thing. For example, my honors chem prof recommended that I apply for some scholarships, and I actually won one of them, which was super exciting and now I have a full ride to KU.

Specialized advising and priority enrollment are probably the two BEST things about the honors program though. From what I’ve heard, regular advising isn’t that great. I had some friends who weren’t in the honors program and they were WAY jealous of our advising, since their advisers didn’t know much about their fields of study and don’t really have a connection with their advisees. Priority enrollment is so awesome - you get to enroll before the basketball players (and all other athletes) and before all of the other students at KU, even seniors, as a member of the honors program. So, you definitely can get into the classes you want.

The honors program even has a special building on campus especially for honors students to hang out and study. There are a few classrooms there too, so some honors classes are held there. It’s really close to most of the residence halls on Daisy Hill, so unless you’re in the schol halls, GSP, Corbin, or Oliver, you can probably walk there in 5 minutes or less. They hold barbecues and other special events for honors students - we had a Harry Potter movie night there last year, which was a lot of fun, including the butterbeer.

I definitely agree with cjcollege that it makes KU a LOT smaller. Honors classes are so much smaller. My usual example is genchem/honors genchem: 1000 students in the largest auditorium on campus vs. less than 40 students where your professor comes to your labs and makes sure people understand what’s going on and makes an effort to be available to help you succeed.

I don’t think being out-of-state affects whether you’ll be accepted into the honors program or not. It’s your academic record, and the types of scholarships that KU is offering you, I think. If you get into the honors program, you definitely want to consider KU. The honors program is super fantastic, and I promise you won’t be disappointed.