Why enter honors program in college?

Xtrasparklesplz
Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:21:17 +0000

I’m in the Honors Program at my school, and it’s great. At a huge state school, it’s hard to find an adviser who knows what they’re talking about and classes taught by good professors. Being in the honors program ensure that you’ll find a great adviser, who’s knowledgeable not just in their specialty, but about the entire school. All the honors classes I’ve taken have been worthwhile, more specialized, and a lot more interesting than the regular classes. There’s an extra challenge to some of the classes, but I totally agree about the smaller class sizes. For example, General Chemistry is about 1000 students in the regular section (pretty intimidating, and the professors and TA’s were mean). More like 30 or 40 in the honors section, and the professor gets to know everyone by name, stops by labs, and makes sure that she’s always available to help.

Living in Honors housing was pretty neat too. I met a lot of people who had similar interests to me, and we participated in a lot of cool events. A lot of the people I lived with were in one of my classes, so we studied together, which was helpful for gen chem. Sometimes volunteering and recreational sports, but we even held a college nutrition event at the beginning of the year with a dietician who helped us think about making healthy choices in the cafeteria. We also have a special building (small, but all ours) for the honors program which hosts a lot of events and is available for study groups. We had Harry Potter watch parties, special pre-advising sessions, to make sure you got the most out of your advising meetings, and BBQ’s for graduating seniors and for parents’ weekend. Research is easier to get into, and people are great about recommending you to apply for on-campus scholarships. I’d totally recommend taking part in the honors program if you can. For completing the honors program, we get a medal at graduation, but no degrees are rewarded by the honors program.