DD is going into 11th grade this fall. She had a 1370 on PSAT last fall and that resulted in mail, email, t-shirts, etc. from several high end schools. After looking into all this I realized that she’s rejection-fodder for admission stats at those schools (very cruel thing to do to a kid, imho, since they’re so susceptible to advertising). She got a 30 on ACT in the winter/spring. I imagine these test scores will increase somewhat this year, say 1440 and 32, due to previous experience and maturity but that still won’t meet the criteria for the high end schools. Anyway, the other day I was talking to my nephew and his girlfriend, who are a few years out of college, and it turns out his girlfriend was in the honors section of the state U. She loved it. Smaller classes, individualized attention, etc. yet still in a big university with ranked football, etc. Seems to me like you get the best of both worlds.
I can’t find many stories on CC about honors programs at state universities, i.e. what they’re like compared to high end schools. Anyone have a story about that?
FYI: no hooks, light ECs compared to most I read here, straight A’s, AP Bio (4), etc. Refused to do any prep before the PSAT or ACT and won’t “play the game” to get those scores up (so far, hopefully that’ll change). Hasn’t zeroed in on a major so far. Funding not an issue.
Honors programs vary greatly from college to college in terms of what one needs ot qualify for the program what the honors program offers so it will be important to look at the particulars at each school she is considering.
Honors colleges are great. Small classes, all are taught by profs, D. had no single class taught by TA, all around winning situation. But with 30 she would have not gotten into her Honors program that had only 200 spots. With 32, maybe. I hope that “automatic” increase in score due to maturity is a possibility, but in my eyes, leaving potentially couple hundreds of thousands on the table for the next person because you did not want to spend few hours preparing is not a good idea.
I’d have a big problem if my kid refused to put any effort whatsoever into studying for exams that could save us thousands of dollars, because why bother, mom and dad can just pay. For those who haven’t been following, the max score on the new PSAT is 1520, so 1440 without studying is not that far off.
miamidp your message seem contradicting. I would study and put forth effort for ACT only once.
What I have learned and was told by students at the different University giving me tours is Honors college is a great thing early in your college life. It’s basically going to a private college at a large University.
The benefits are smaller classes only taught by professor’s and the University elite ones. Library benefits, 1 college you could check out 500 books for 1 year. Schedule preference and some universities do dorm preference.
I was told your 4th semester is when you pull the plug if your not committed to the extracurricular activity that is required. The rigor of the class is better than being in a lecture hall of 200 students. Future research opportunity increases as you know the professors with the most funding. Before that 4th semester there is not a big commitment and going forward outside of honors your class size drop huge as it will be major focus with several labs.
The one thing about leaving honors college any scholarship $ will not be available moving forward.
This is a girl who is entering 11th grade. So her scores are from her sophomore year. Even with no prep (and I agree that not studying is foolish), her scores will naturally go up because she will have accrued that much more knowledge by the time she takes the test. For now, she needs to understand that signing up for prep classes and taking the ACT multiple times might be playing the game a bit, but opening the prep book and using it to familiarize herself with the material is just common sense!
@MiamiDAP – believe me, we know how much of a “bad decision” it was. We tried numerous times to get her moving. Very frustrating for us. She was blowing off school at the time as well and just unhappy with everything (she goes to a really good public HS, though overcrowded, and was having awful social issues at the time). We think she bottomed out right around the time she took the ACT in Feb. She had an 85 avg in Accel Math the Fall semester and got an 80-something on the first major test of the Spring semester – many tears later she decided to start paying attention and ended up with a 90 overall. That’s part of the maturity thing. However, I am dreading this Fall, with AP Chem, AP Calc AB, and AP CS Principles on her schedule. We’ll see.
Thanks for the details on your experience. That’s just the kind of thing I was looking for. It sounds like your DD got into what our state U calls a “Fellowship”. Fantastic!
My son will be attending the Honors College at one of our state colleges. His particular Honors College accepts approx 250 students each year. Out of those 250 students , 77 students were invited to interview for entry into the "elite section " of Honors and compete for higher level of merit awards. My son also applied to the Honors College at our large state university . He was accepted to both. He began his testing in his Junior year . He took both the SAT and the ACT. He scored better on the ACT with a 30 the first time he took it. He studied and practiced timed tests and increased his score to a 32. With the higher score, his GPA , ECs and class rank, he qualified for close to a full ride and the "elite section " of the Honors program.
As part of the program, some perks include participation in an exclusive living learning community , priority housing, priority schedules, smaller classes , mentor opportunities , stipends for study abroad, guidance and assistance to apply for prestigious scholarship programs like Goldwater, Rhodes, Fulbright .
I agree each program is different , so make sure that you evaluate the perks of each specific program. Good luck to your daughter.
@MiamiDAP Had your daughter taken the ACT prior to prepping for 5 hours and getting a 33? If not, how do you know what impact the 5 hours of studying did? I have known several people who prepped a lot longer than 5 hours who saw little to no increase in score (and a couple who did a point worse). Just curious.
She took the PSAT once in her sophomore year of high school and refused to study before it. She’s fine! Quite frankly, I don’t blame her; studying is great but the craze to push kids into obsessing over college and standardized tests too early is depressing. With some more experience and maturity she’ll probably score higher just by being in higher grades, and as she gets closer to college she may feel more willing to study for it.
Also, what @saillakeerie said. Most analysis of SAT/ACT scores have shown that on average they don’t go up very much anyway, and most of the increase in scores has to do with the impact of familiarity with the test (now you know how it works) and not the effect of studying content.
As for your broader question, I think the question is not (or should not be) what honors programs are like compared to high-end elite universities but rather whether honors programs at public universities are very good to excellent and could be a good fit for your D. I think there is value being at the top of the heap, but as someone else said they’re going to vary a lot. Most of her major classes will probably still be regular departmental classes, so some of those - at least at the 100- to 200-level - will still be large lectures. But some public universities do have really excellent personalized programs for honors students.
Y’all should keep in mind that there are both honors colleges and residential colleges at some of the state universities. They both offer special opportunities for students to have smaller classes and closer contact with professors.
As one example, at Michigan State in addition to the honors college there is James Madison College, Lyman Briggs College, and the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities.
My D studied for the SAT and ended up with almost exactly the same score; subsections varied somewhat. She did not retake the ACT as she felt the SAT suited her better. I’m not saying no one should study, I’m just putting forth a different viewpoint from @MiamiDAP . What works for one does not always work for another. As an aside, D received completely unexpected and generous merit awards from every school which accepted her
Honors Colleges at State U’s are a great thing and we used one as D’s safety. At U of NM, she met automatic cutoffs for the program and could attend at in-state rates which are lower than many states. Housing was guaranteed. Each Honors program has its own perks and requirements, so I agree with those who say to check the particular program(s) you/your D are interested in. There may be a thesis or special project required, for instance.
Small LAC’s are a great thing too! I haven’t heard anything about what your D would like, and maybe she will want to apply to a varied assortment of schools.
Amherst should be approached as a crap shoot, but as long as you view it that way, if D is interested, let her apply. That’s all part of creating a balanced application list.
My D and I did not get serious about applications till summer before senior year, but we used sophomore and junior years to visit a few colleges to help her see what she liked. You don’t even have to visit schools you’re zeroing in on, if they are hard to get to. Visit colleges near where you live or where you happen to be traveling. It will help with questions such as Greek life or not, “preppy” or not, urban or rural, small or large, etc.
Oh please. Five hours of prep is better than nothing…but I seriously doubt that the 33 ACT score was totally because of 5 hours of prep the five days before the ACT test.
For SAT/ACT do you want her to study on her own or are you having her take a class or use a tutor? Some kids may need the push of an outside class or teacher. Many here have kids that are motivated to study on their own, but others may want to do well but find it hard to use the study books on their own.
Honors programs vary by college and how the honors programs align with classes required for majors. Some are excellent and provide lots of opportunity for early registration and small classes, but others not so much. At some point, however, the student will be taking classes with the overall student population and graduating from the college, so she should be sure she is happy with both the honors program and the college.
I don’t think that a sophomore not wanting to spend time prepping for standardized tests is a big deal. My son took the ACT 3 times in high school (it is given by the school junior and senior years). His score went up every time and I don’t think he prepped at all.
Thanks everyone for the replies. I’m liking the honors route even more than before. It will be a struggle to get DD to do that given her desire to go OOS (some kids in this area want to do that, i don’t know exactly why). I don’t know which major she wants and she flip flops around quite a bit. Bio is out right now. Chem seems to be the favorite at the moment.
One thing I want note here. On reading my OP I realized that some may think “spoiled brat” due to the lack of test prep, etc. I do think she is spoiled, which is mostly my doing, but she isn’t a “brat”. It took over nine years for us to have a successful pregnancy and she was originally a twin but one was lost along the way. That was followed by PPROM at 17 weeks (where the doctor said the thing you never want to hear, “there’s nothing we can do”). Nine weeks of bedrest at home, complete placenta previa at 27 weeks (the neonatalogist said, “well, we’ve covered the entire chapter on pregnancy complications now” after the ultrasound), followed by eleven weeks bedrest in the antenatal ward. Low birth weight (4.25 lbs) at 36 weeks. Did fine then acute glomerulonephritis at 7-8 years old. Hospitalized for pneumonia a year year later due to what was assumed to be swine flu during that damn outbreak (the subsequent recurrent pneumonia since may be due to the pregnancy difficulties, there’s no way to know for sure according to the doctors). So, we bug our daughter about studying for tests because we say she’ll fail otherwise and she replies, “let me fail”, I simply can’t be hard on her to study and punish her if she doesn’t. Mother Nature has thrown her to the wolves several times already. I won’t do it.
One last note (and apologies because I’ve had too much to drink while my wife and daughter in Chicago right now for Lallapalooza and college tours). At times of maximum frustration with how things are going I go back to the time I was talking to to fellow husband in the antenatal ward’s nurses’ station towards the end of our pregnancy. His wife was there with twins at 23 weeks. He asked how we were doing and I said “we’re at 35w5d but I want to keep the bun in the oven as long as possible”. He replied, “deliver now, you’re doing great”. Shortly afterwards, the alarm goes off in the nurses’ station and it’s his room. Everyone goes running and it was his wife in trouble. They lost both of the twins that night. I told our doctors to deliver our daughter ASAP the next day.
@droppedit You’re daughter is just a rising junior. She still has time to retest( as you have already planned) . My son took a test taking boot camp which taught him some great strategies for taking the tests , and that was sufficient to bring his score up. He found that very helpful. Also, are you opposed to her applying to an OOS Honors program? Once they reach that level, many students qualify for merit that would make OOS financially feasible . Good luck to you.
I’ve yet to see a university where their honors program is closed to OOS students. It may be a bit harder to get in since the university may be required to admit a minimum number of in-state students, but it’s absolutely a possibility. A lot of schools have specific OOS merit scholarships available that will bring tuition down to the in-state rate (or lower), so don’t let the sticker price keep you from looking.
Also, keep in mind that many private universities also have honors programs that offer similar benefits to their public university peers.
My D was admitted to the UMASS Commonwealth Honors College and then invited into the more “elite” BioTap program that admits only 38 students. She was adamant that the state flagship was too large and only applied as a financial safety. She was very excited when she was asked to join BioTap and the school jumped up a bit on her list but the size (20K students ±) was still a huge turn-off. In the end, we used the school as our financial measuring stick…she was admitted to five other schools for less $, two of which we considered as good or better, one of which we were both very happy with and it was chosen.