I don’t have many details to offer, but we have gotten the impression that our freshman D could take or leave the Honors College at her public flagship. When looking at schools last year, being in Honors was VERY important to her. Based on what, I’m not sure.
Last semester, when she and her roommate were discussing housing for sophomore year, her roommate was considering dropping out of honors because it was sort of a pain to fit the required honors sections into her schedule.
I don’t think it’s always easy to do a cost benefit analysis of honors programs ahead of time. As @gouf78 said, so far we’ve got “great dorm” and “priority registration” in the benefit column.
At the school my D is looking at honors, I think her biggest concern is the time that honors requires in classes that she is not particularly passionate about, maybe even just barely interested in. Also with the specified honors courses, she feels it will rob her the flexibility to take course she may actually want to take. She is not trying to avoid hard classes by not doing honors, but after four years of courses pretty well defined in HS, she wants as much freedom as she can have to find “her thing.” As a tentative psychology major also shopping LA majors, this makes sense, in contrast to my “100% know they want to be an engineer” student. So as people said, depends on the kid, major and school.
I think parents (including myself) have to be careful not to push them into it because of an idea of prestige or status if there are not true benefits to be in the program for them personally. Priority registration is key at some schools, means diddly at others. Honors housing can be incredible or not. As adults, we can see the benefits to discussion based classes, but is it too much for your student? Determine the gains and losses by being in the program. My feeling is any honors program has both positives and negatives for a student.
I think at our local school it just meant better dorm options (not really a deal as many kids won’t dorm, period) and the honors part if like doing the IBD all over again. It isn’t a school with impacted classes etc. My college soph (eng) has no time for philosophy classes and any IBD kid has done plenty of intensive writing (for an eng/stem reqs). They don’t want another EE to write.
Something else I’ve realized over time – of the three things I wanted to do (ChemE major, Spanish minor, honors program), I could really only pick two of the three. I dropped the minor. Just couldn’t fit it in between the highly structured engineering program and the honors/research requirements.
And given how much scholarship money I get from the honors college, how much I appreciate being able to register early, and how much I value the relative peace and quiet of honors housing, it was easy to determine which thing I would have to drop. Not easy to give up the idea of learning Spanish, though.
Back in the day, the honors program at my college was transformative. Regarding structure, I got guaranteed housing in a quirky special interest dorm and I took interesting, challenging courses that substituted for gen eds with other nerdy kids. It was inspired by the Chicago core and I had access to life-changing courses and professors. But I was also a humanities/social science/writer type, not a STEM student.
I can’t remember if priority registration was part of the deal, but for kids contemplating enrolling in large public research universities, that alone would be worth it, IMO. How many stories have you heard of kids adding a semester or year on to their studies because they got locked out of courses that were essential in order to progress through a popular major? He could always join the honors program and then drop later, if it’s not his thing. Many do.
Daughter is in honors, premed, and engineering. She graduated with an IB diploma in high school so for her the honors college was not a lot of work. She did have priority registration which was a big advantage at a big school. She had access to research opportunities and also received a scholarship. The honors classes had about 20 students so that was a plus. Being in honors has not hindered her gpa in anyway as she makes the dean’s list.
Her major advisor who helps plan out what classes to take is an Honors college advisor. As a result of being in honors she has had some core class requirements waived and also has had access to special opportunities only granted to honors college participants. It made a large school feel small. She has been involved in some community projects that only added skills to her resume. Often her advisor will send emails to honors college students regarding opportunities from employers for part time jobs or summer internships. She is also had to opportunity to participate in leadership and mentoring positions for the college.
She is now completing her junior year and will graduate within four years. I think at large schools sometimes it can be stressful trying to get your prerequisite classes for your major so that you don’t have to spend an extra semester. Since she has managed to do well in her classes she was offered the opportunity to work on an accelerated masters degree that she could complete in one additional year vs two. She is also getting advising on applying for fully funded masters phd programs.
She has had a positive experience and in her opinion she is glad she had this opportunity. It really is up to the student to decide. I feel college is a time when a student can challenge themselves and get out of their comfort zone but I understand it is not a priority for everybody.
Honors Colleges and Honors Program are slightly or substantially different things. Our kid applied to: 1 HYPSM, the same UC application submitted to 4 UC colleges (a single online application that is submitted to the UCs you choose to apply) and 1 Honors Colleges at state schools. That was it. Basically, he wrote essays for the HYPSM college and changed/altered it for all others.
He worked very assiduously on HYPSM essays, worked kind of hard on UC application, worked fast on Honors College application. HC with near full-ride scholarships were his back-ups. and we were 99% confident that he would get into at least one of 4 UCs and obviously the HYPSM application was a reach. As a last resort, one option was taking a gap year to study abroad and apply again if he somehow did not get into any school; or alternatively, even if he got into the HYPSM college, he wanted to take a gap year and defer enrollment.
The point of this response is that with Honors Colleges, you pretty much know you will get in as long as you have certain level of stats; that’s one good thing about HCs which make them good vehicles as safeties. It really comes down to getting good scholarships at HCs that make it worth going there for high-achieving students. This is especially true for high-achieving CA students. Most CA students who can get into UCLA or UC Berkeley will not go to HC unless they are given very good scholarships. I was working hard on persuading my kid to attend the HC over UCLA/UC Berkeley because I thought that he would get into the HC and at least one of UCLA/UC Berkeley because the HC gave a near full-ride scholarship. My effort actually back-fired because I kept on saying too many good things about this HC, which made my kid not want to go to this HC. I was punished for my over zealous efforts to convince my kid to attend the HC when he unexpectedly got into Stanford REA. As a result, his 4 years of college at HYPSM at full pay will be a lot higher than the costs he would have incurred at UCLA/UCB as in-state student. I become wistful when I look at the scholarship letter sent by the HC and think of what could have been. I have decided to focus on “what could be” instead.
It is so school dependent. At my D’s school, the honors classes were small, seminar type classes that she thought were easier than her other classes. They were also just a small percentage of the classes she took. The advantage to being in honors was that there were other perks, such as priority registration, stadium seating and honors housing, which frankly aren’t as good now as they were when she was a freshman. There were also social activities and other honors events, and she could be as involved or uninvolved as she wanted with the honors college. If you fulfilled the requirements (which she did) you graduated with the honors college designation. Some students (particularly those with rigid schedules, like engineering) found it difficult to complete the requirements but still were able to take advantage of the perks. Take a good look at how honors works at the particular school - it may or may not be worth it. As for summer work, my daughter had to do some reading and also write an essay for her one-week honors course that was held right before school started, but it wasn’t at all difficult and the grading was lenient. It just wasn’t an issue.
I have 2 engineering kids and I agree that it’s not an automatic decision to go into the honors program. Even within the UC system, the schools vary on honors requirements for engineers. Their classes are hard enough and stressful enough, I wouldn’t want to load them down unnecessarily. But if the honors requirements are not overly taxing, the priority scheduling benefits can be worth it for reducing stress when it comes time to sign up for classes.
I had no choice about which college to go to; I had to attend the CUNY 10 minutes from home because it was all I could afford. I am still thankful for the honors program that I was in because it allowed to be in classes with other bright students at what was otherwise an open admissions school. I was used to advanced and accelerated HS classes and was bored stiff in some of my classes.
My D was not a great HS student but she scored well enough on her SAT to be offered admission to the Honors program at her SUNY. She originally declined but after her first semester, she found that most of the friends she made were in the program so she applied and was accepted. It was a program where you took a set number of seminars, which she loved, even one which was conceptually math related. She enjoyed it so much that she encouraged her brother to apply to it as well and he really liked it, too. There were no other perks.
Techson17 was invited to apply to an honors program, also at a SUNY. This one required an essay, which he did and he was accepted. It is similar in that it offers seminars geared to honors students, but it also has honors housing and priority registration, as well as a stipend. If he chooses this school, he will do the honors program.
@twoinanddone No, the calligraphy course that Steve Jobs took at Reed was not an Honors course but it was a very special one-off. When I was there (before Jobs), a different professor taught calligraphy, and in addition to teaching technique and styles, he taught philosophy! Everybody on campus got to see the product of that course, mainly in the form of signs and banners that festooned dining halls and other rooms about campus. But students also learned to work with pens and in smaller formats. Bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_J._Reynolds
S1 was in an honors program at a large state U, free tuition, and special classes.
In the end, most of his classes were regular classes, the early registration did not help him much,
and the few honors classes were sometimes fun but useless when he transferred to another college.
They were too specific to that honors program, other colleges may give credit but not count for any particular
requirements. Better be sure you are not going to transfer !
Also for an engineering major, the courses are more than rigorous enough, the peers are all bright after some
are weeded out fresh year, so no need for an honors program.
Just as there are many different types of schools, there are many different types of Honors Programs and Honors Colleges. My D found that not all are worth applying to, and that sometimes it can make the difference between being lost in a crowd, and on a first name basis with your professors.
At Valparaiso, student in the HC will write and produce a 90 minute theater performance with music. It’s supposed to be a good bonding experience, it’s an amazing interdisciplinary collaboration, and for my theatre-loving D, it was a huge part of why she applied to the HC. But for some students, it would be an experience that would stretch them out of their comfort zone (which could be a good thing!). There were special events for the students in the HC as well. And a lot of extra reading and writing, but D felt that part would be worth the tradeoff for the other experiences. At another school she was accepted to, she didn’t apply to their honors program. It’s actually a series of “Honors Colloquia” that at the 100 level are like honors classes in high school, but at the higher level replace electives and can prevent you from getting a minor.
One school she’s still waiting to hear from, the honors program is very selective and comes with a huge scholarship. At the school she is most likely to attend (a large public), the Honors College gets her the feel of a small LAC, which is what she wants, priority registration, and a spot in the new honors dorm (which has private bathrooms - who has heard of such a thing for a freshman?!)
I have been an administrator in Honors education for almost 20 years and am now the parent of an Honors student at a public university in the South. I’ve enjoyed reading the comments in this thread and thought I’d add my thoughts from both of my perspectives.
As others have stated, Honors is not for everybody and all Honors Programs/Colleges are not created equal. At their best, Honors Programs/Colleges will help a student make the most of their undergraduate education and prepare them for for their future. In general, Honors gives students more personalized attention, more academic and pre-professional opportunities, and in the case of larger universities, give the student a smaller community to be a part of.
The Honors College where my son is enrolled works very well for him. He is majoring in an engineering field. At some schools, engineering and Honors do not mix well because the requirements can conflict and will add time to degree. That is not the case where S goes to school. The Honors curriculum is very flexible with minimal requirements (but many opportunities). He likes the small class size of his Honors courses, the enthusiasm of his professors and classmates, the variety of courses offered. He likes his Honors advisor and priority registration, ensuring he has control over his schedule. He also likes the Honors residence hall, which is a very strong community. There are many activities planned in the residence hall (social, academic, cultural, professional development) and he likes living with like-minded students. He does not feel isolated from the general population; this semester he is taking 2 non-Honors courses and he is involved in several campus organizations including musical groups that have a diverse membership.
We looked at Honors Programs/Colleges that would not have worked well for him; those that had many Honors requirements in terms of classes, service hours, attendance at cultural events, etc. Other students might thrive in such Programs/Colleges. I think it’s important to visit and ask lots of questions to see if it’s a good fit (not unlike finding a university or college).
What I find professionally, is that Honors Programs and Colleges (and generally there is no difference) vary a great deal. I am a member of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) which has something like 1000 institutional members that have 999 different configurations of Programs and Colleges! Honors at a small Liberal Arts College looks vastly different from that at a large university. A tech heavy school’s Honors Program will look very different than one with a more diverse curriculum. Some Programs/Colleges are very flexible; others are fairly rigid. Arguably, there’s an Honors Program/College for everyone, you just have to find it.
When some say “great dorms” are the plus for an HC, this in itself can mean very different things. For most, it means that only Honors students live there. But for others, it means the dorm with only singles - so no roommates. This can be a positive for some, and negative for others.
At least one school we visited offered the Honors program scholarship which covered full tuition, but the small print also meant that room and board in the honors college was, for a single, higher than room and board in a non-honors program for a double. For many of us, finances dictate what the choices really mean.
Op- just make sure you don’t sell your son short. A four page essay for a college student should not be make or break- do you really want him to graduate from college without being able to do such an exercise? Every working engineer at some point will be asked to take a ream of data and write an executive summary (i.e. a few pages interpreting and explaining what is going on for management who may not be engineers). This isn’t like being asked to write a 60 page research thesis with an appendix, citations, and primary work… this is a four page essay.
Isn’t this the point of college- to learn how to do this kind of stuff?
Yup, it is. Its just that its on summer break, before college actually starts for one. The other is it makes me wonder how writing intensive the Honors College will be overall.