<p>I don’t have the link (too lazy) but in todays cav daily, it has been made official - come the class of 2011 - echols no longer has priority registration over everybody, just one’s class year.</p>
<p>So lets see now - the “honors” program (and i use that term extremely loosely) at UVa has just removed the most useful part of actually being part of the “honors” program. </p>
<p>All I have to say is thank god - enough of these 1st year echols scholars getting into classes that 3rd years have trouble getting into.</p>
<p>Although I must say - this would certainly lessens the value of the already overrated echols scholar program.</p>
<p>There has always been great animosity towards Echols Scholars around course registration time. As the editorial in the Cav Daily pointed out, perhaps everyone will discover that their problems getting the courses they wanted had nothing to do with Echols Scholars after all. </p>
<p>Don’t forget that registration is done not by year, but by academic level. Academic level is based on the number of hours you have completed and ap credit counts. Many Echols students arrive with enough ap credit to be classified at academic level 2, even though they are first year students. I suppose some even arrive at academic level 3. </p>
<p>Echols are still exempt from area requirements and foreign language requirements - probably much more valuable that early course registration.</p>
<p>Like you said, many Echols students come in with a great deal of credit, all of which fulfills a lot of area requirements. If someone does well on their SAT IIs, the writing requirement is gone as well. A lot of Echols students come in with maybe only one or two reqs to fulfill at most (assuming they were not exempt in the first place), so I think the course registration is far more important, especially if you like to “course hoard” like me :)</p>
<p>i don’t have animosity towards echols scholars because they’re filling up classes that I would want (after all - there arn’t that many echols scholars) but its the fact that a first can obtain a spot that a 3rd year couldn’t that gets me angry. who cares what a first year takes - its not like it matters.</p>
<p>also the area requirements are so overrated - a major at UVa is roughly 30 credits…out of 120. you have to fill in 90 credits with something, and you will, just by virtue of taking a bunch of classes, fufill the requirements.</p>
<p>Even if you double major, 60 credits, 20 classes, is more than enough to fufill the requirements.</p>
<p>Meh, whatever. Priority registration isn’t all that great, anyway. This new change doesn’t surprise me, though - UVA’s attempts at recruiting top students through “honors” programs are kind of a joke compared to what peer schools are doing.</p>
<p>A lot of kids come in with 30-40+ credits (I came in with about 50, many Echols scholars come in with at least 30-50 due to the nature of the program). My AP/IB/Gov school credits were split up. </p>
<p>If you’re a science student, then being able to say you are an Echols scholar while applying for undergrad research is fairly useful (why else would you be a student here instead of a significantly better science school… which is basically any other school which you could get into). If you’re a social science student, then ‘course hoarding’ is very useful. If you’re both, like me, then Echols is basically the best thing ever, since you can do the best of both.</p>
<p>oh I don’t doubt that at all. It’s the same here. I’m just saying that the kids that come in with the huge amounts of credits are AP students, not IB students, and therefore the next logical step from this decision will be to disregard prior credits because students are being penalized for what kind of high school they went to (including if they went to one without many AP courses).</p>
<p>aw man someone beat me to it. we were talking about this before class today… but we concluded we would be “grandfathered” and it would only apply to the new class…?</p>
<p>hah super.nova, I hadn’t heard that =P, but they did it a couple years ago at W&M, and it does make sense (and will obviously be unpopular to those that come in with large amounts of credits). The main argument here was that hardly anyone uses their credits to graduate early and people graduating before you should have first chances at the classes.</p>