My son had a question that I can’t really answer; would love your thoughts on it all: about honors programs.
He wants to study computer engineering. He’s looking at some auto merit schools, he has pretty good stats, but hates writing essays.
He’s wondering how hard and necessary an honors program is for someone in his major. And he’s sort of wondering why he should apply for the programs - a few deadlines are coming. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the benefits for kids in hard programs to begin with. thanks!
@bgbg4us Usually the biggest benefits are early registration and honors housing. The early registration would definitely benefit him in CS I would think. The honors housing is nice, but some honors kids don’t take advantage of it, some do. For instance, you often can’t room with a non-honors kid if you live in honors housing. My D17 loves her honors experience. She has been offered research and access to grad courses during UG. She has extra advisors who can get her into classes w/o having to take pre-requisites. They have social events. For her, it’s been great.
@bgbg4us - My son is the same way about essays. I do not see him sticking with an honors program more than a year or two, so it’s mainly looking at what the perks are for the first couple years and if they mean anything to him. He is applying for the honors program at ISU because he wants the early registration and smaller class sizes in a huge school. We went to the presentation on it during our tour and there is a lot of acclimating the students to college life and social activities the first year which he thought he might like. Another school had a nice scholarship for kids to do study abroad if they were in the honors program, but seeing as it’s his 3rd place school now and he’s been accepted to the other two, he’s going to skip applying for honors there.
Oh yeah. After reading pp, the research opportunity was what DS was most interested in. During freshman year they have a faculty mentor program for students in the honor program that often leads to research opportunities.
@bgbg4us I think it depends a lot on the college, as honors programs are not all the same. My S applied for honors programs at most of his colleges, but not all. Overall, the biggest perk seems to be priority registration. S likes the option of smaller classes with select profs, too. Honors colleges often have separate housing, offering a community of (usually) more serious students with a (usually!) quieter dorm.
Now, some honors programs will require a writing-intensive seminar or two, or three. Or a thesis. It’s important to review the specific requirements for each college.
You have to know what each honors program offers. My daughter is applying to most of them (some are automatic admission), but one (Loyola Chicago) is known to house the honors program in an outdated and anti-social dorm, and she doesn’t want that. I think making friends your freshman year is so important, I support that decision.
@bgbg4us the biggest benefit my DS18 has had from being in honors has been the early registration. He’s a computer science major and thanks to his early registration he’s been able to get into classes with preferred professors or times that work best for him. That’s been a huge benefit. It was also nice to have him in honors housing his freshman year and he also liked the smaller seminar style classes for some of his gen eds that he took as honors. He will probably not graduate with honors as he probably won’t be able to convert enough upper level classes to honors to meet the requirement for graduating with honors, but it’s still been something very useful for him. I should add though that for him his honors was auto admit with his regular application so there was no debate about writing essays and additional applications. For Penn State he had planned to apply for honors but it was so painful to try to get the essays done that he eventually gave up and didn’t apply for honors there.
Just joining the honors college chorus! DD17 has really benefited from early registration. She also has has smaller classes and better professors through honors. She hasn’t needed it but at her school the honors college also has social events, block seating for football games, and a built in community. She has had the chance to do research and she did take advantage of the honors dorms where she met great friends from all over.
I know some of you have heard as well, but in case you didn’t get the mail yet, we finally received merit award info for UMinn. D20 was awarded the National Scholarship ($15K/yr) keeping it very high on the list. Given the large increases in tuition over the last 3 cycles, this is a welcome sight. She has already gotten in to nursing there, so it’s a great option. We are OOS.