That’s really odd that you had that experience at UK. I’m a NMF freshman in the Honors Program at UK, and when I visited last year I found the honors rep I met with much more welcoming. She did mention that not all NMFs get into the Honors Program, but the sense I got from her was that the essays were really important, so NMFs shouldn’t rely on a single test score to get them in. I ended up choosing UK because it has arguably the very best Classics program (my major) in the country, so the benefits for NMFs wasn’t necessarily my #1 consideration, but I found the Honors people to be fairly friendly.