<p>^Honors humanities and Gemstone are subsets of honors and definitely DO have a living-learning atmosphere. I did mean general “honors” and not its more specific programs and apologize for any confusion there. </p>
<p>Each person can evaluate whether the general honors program is useful to them or not - while I described the program as useless, I did qualify that for someone still completing CORE requirements or desiring to take extra “fun” classes, then that would not be the case. While useless is indeed a strong word, it DID accurately describe how I felt my experience with it to be, with the qualifications I provided.</p>
<p>That said, I may have also taken for granted the dorm I lived in and the people I met there - I have no idea what it would have been like living in a dorm entirely full of non-honors students (such as Easton or Elkton). But honors isn’t something - unless its a subset such as honors humanities or gemstone - that you would “decline” since fulfilling the requirements or not is totally up to you. </p>
<p>But I do find scholars versus general honors to be more of a real living learning program. And as a UMD student I would recommend seriously considering scholars if you are choosing between the two (general honors and scholars, that is, not honors humanities or gemstone versus scholars). Each one is going to appeal to different subsets of people, so it’s good to use the website and think about what you want.</p>