<p>I know that the program offers a full tuition scholarship to something like only 75 undergraduates per year, so hey I am not complaining.</p>
<p>What I'm wondering is if there is any sort of catch by enrolling in the Honor College/this program.</p>
<p>I'm worried that as a prospective engineering major, I might be forced to a lot of classes i otherwise would not be taking if i were not in the honors college. For example, I know BU has quite a few mandatory liberal arts classes only required for Honor College students.</p>
<p>If anyone with first hand experience is hanging around here on CC, I'd love to hear all about it.</p>
<p>Im also genuinely surprised I heard back so early, it's not even March yet. The wait continues for the rest of the schools..</p>
<p>The only required honors class is a welcome to honors 1 credit your first semester. After that you can take honors classes or honors sections of classes you want as you want. If you accumulate enough honors classes (like 6) it is noted on your degree. The core/requirements for honors students is no different than for any other student.</p>
<p>The only “catch” is that university scholars and NMF who are on full tuition have to fulfill a certain number of community service hours each year.</p>
<p>thank you TomSrOfBoston- the wording on the correspondence I received mentions “will receive UP TO full tuition” so I was concerned it might be less than full.</p>
<p>Current first year student on full tuition (NMF) scholarship here.</p>
<p>It seems everyone’s answered these for the most part, but I just thought I’d confirm a few things:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Yes, the only specific honors course you need to take is Enhancing Honors, which is a 1-credit class your first semester. It’s a joke. Meets once a week and only for an hour. Its workload is practically zero.</p></li>
<li><p>That said, you do need to take a certain number of honors sections (I believe it is either 4 or 6) but this is basically just taking an honors section of a class you’d be taking anyhow (e.g. “Calc 2 for Science/Engineering Honors” or something similar.) It’s so easy that it’s pretty much a non-requirement.</p></li>
<li><p>As Kiddie said, for this scholarship, you do need to do 100 hours of community service a year, which is a lot easier than it sounds as long as you make an effort to so 3 hours or so a week.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>Congratulations on your acceptance and your scholarship, and good luck with the rest of your applications!</p>
<p>My daughter is a freshman in the honors program and hangs around with lots of honors engineering students - they are definitely challenged and very busy with labs, projects, etc.</p>
<p>PA-C my son is a sophomore in the Honors Program so maybe I can help a little.</p>
<p>He has already taken the required 6 honors classes and he has been more than challenged-I understand your concern about that as he was too but if anything it has been much harder than he ever thought it was going to be.</p>
<p>He loves the environment there-smart kids who also like to have fun-in the middle of a great city-lots of competition as well but in a good way-he is very happy for whatever that is worth.</p>
<p>Another question- are merit scholarships good for four or five years? I read students can choose to do either four or five year program depending on number of coops- does this change the cost? Also- if they do a 4+1 masters program does the scholarship cover that extra year?</p>
<p>The scholarships are good for 8 semesters. Since you don’t have to pay tuition during co-op, the cost is the same whether you do the four or five year program.</p>
<p>It only covers the 8 semesters undergraduate of the 4+1, so you have to pay for the one year you are a graduate student. I think there are two professional programs they pay for all years-PharmD and Physical Therapy.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that the CS masters is competitive. Everyone I know in it was pretty much invited, and they are absolutely spectacular students. Most are insanely gifted at CS, even outside of the classroom.</p>
<p>The requirements for the honors program are that you take six honors courses. One of these will be a one credit “Enhancing Honors” course freshman year that is a joke. Another has to be an interdisciplinary seminar. Four or five of these are offered each semester in varying topics. The remaining four classes are electives that you can choose from any of the offered honors courses.</p>
<p>If you’re lucky, your major has honors sections of courses you need to take anyway (such as calculus or differential equations). However, if you already have credit for calculus courses through AP credits, you can’t fill as many honors courses that way. Upper level courses generally don’t have honors sections. Even for lower level classes, there might only be one honors section, and it might be at a time that doesn’t fit your schedule.</p>
<p>If you can’t find four honors courses in your major, you generally start trying to find honors courses to fulfill your gen ed requirements. This is fine unless you had pretty specific electives you wanted to take. There simply aren’t enough honors students to offer an honors section of everything. So, for example, if you were set on taking History of Rock Music or something for your arts and humanities requirement, you won’t be able to find an honors section.</p>
<p>I’ll add that this actually was sort of annoying to me. I fulfilled my gen ed requirements through mostly non-honors courses, because there were some classes that I thought looked really interesting and were relevant to my career goals that didn’t have honors sections. As a result, my honors courses are just extra electives that don’t count for anything besides getting “Honors Course Distinction.”</p>