My D has been accepted to HTC, and we got a very favorable impression of the school and program during the interview weekend.
We came away with the impression that the students are free to arrange tutorials with any professor in any college or major who will agree to it. Some won’t, a lot will, it seemed. Later, I read a comment from a student that indicated roughly half his tutorials weren’t really his choice. They were either pre-arranged, mandatory, or thrust upon him one way or another. I’m curious to know if that’s an unusual case or not.
So, my questions to parents and Honors Tutorial College students are about those one-on-one tutorials that are the selling point of the program. Are they universally awesome? Are they hit and miss? How free are you to pursue areas of unique interest? Is the workload burdensome? Are some of them formulaic, or is everything really a fresh collaboration? Any profs to avoid doing tutorials with, and why? Anything else you think is noteworthy? Thanks!
We found plenty of people on campus and on-line who seemed satisfied overall. Just trying to get a handle on the ratio of sizzle-to-steak in the HTC tutorials. Thank you!
There’s a long-time poster on CC called @digmedia. His son has experience with the HTC. Hoping he sees this and can give you some information but you can search for his posts.
I’ll give an opinion rather than an answer. I will first say our D chose not to apply to the HTC. She felt that her way forward was fairly well established and frankly didn’t want to take part in the tutorials. I personally thought it sounded like a tremendous program. My impression is that it would be great for a very self directed student. The professors and adults will smooth the path for directions your child might want to take. What HTC program did your D get accepted to? They have professors who head up those programs. I believe in year 1 at least you have set tutorials (within your program) and after that you have more control over them. The program works best when students take the initiative. Their are no gen ed requirements with HTC and they can take courses which might not be available to undergrads but I think they will have to justify them. As @patsmom said @digimedia is far more able to answer this question than I am. Congratulations on your D being accepted and best wishes on her decision. My D will be double majoring in Dance and Exercise Physiology at OU. She wishes to be a Physical Therapist and their programs in those areas were a great fit for her.
I would think History could be an excellent program for an HTC student. It’s my understanding that HTC opens up opportunities for study abroad. Depending on the type of history she is interested in that could be in her future. I could see her discussing options of using her History degree to forward her opportunities for law school or even helping her nail down which type of law she wants to study. She would have graduate level courses available to her and perhaps the tutors could help her focus her course of study and research. Again good luck.
Back in the Stone Age, I was acceoted to the Ohio University Honors Tutorial Program. I did it for one year. I then decided I needed to really concentrate my efforts on my major, and not the HTC courses required for that moniker on my diploma.
I had some friends who stuck it out…and others who bailed like I did.
I will say…I liked my HTC courses, but as I became an upperclassman in my major, these became less important to me.
The HTC worked extremely well for my son, who is very passionate about his craft, very driven, and knows where he wants to go. The HTC is looking for independent, self-driven individuals. The model may not work with everyone. As for professors in other majors not taking on tutorials, I totally understand it. Once you see what they have to do, you’ll realize what an enormous commitment it is. If it were me, I’d rather concentrate on students in my own department.
It seems to me that the major downside of the tutorials is that many times, the subject might not translate to a “traditional” course offering, so if you want to transfer to a different college, some of those credits might not be counted.
I thought HTC was the greatest thing ever invented in terms of college education, but I also know it doesn’t work for all students.
@digmedia what program of study did your son do? Looking through the info, it seems like there are major differences in how it is set up for different programs. (CS looks like you take all the regular classes + a few tutorials, Math looks like it is close to 100% tutorial based.)
I had never heard of HTC before, but it sounds fantastic for the right student.
My son was into filmmaking and concentrated on visual effects. He was in the Media Arts program of the Scripps School of Communications. You’ve seen his work on lots of commercials, music videos (one of which won the MTV VMA award for visual effects), and movies like Iron Man 3, Maleficent, Furious 7, Transformers Dark of the Moon and many more. He is now working on Disney’s live action remake of Beauty and the Beast (with Emily Watson). He was also one of the Lead Artists on Deadpool which recently came out.
Hi my daughter was accepted as a Film HTC student for fall 2021 and she is thrilled! She is a working (regionally) actress but wants to study narrative film production, take high level writing classes, and still study acting. Can you tell me more about the Media Arts in the Scripps school vs the School of Fine Arts and is there any overlap and collaboration for an HTC kid between the 2?
Hello, and apologies for the late reply. I only check in on CC about two or three times a year now.
My son was there so long ago, but I’ll bet that things have not changed in terms of the collaboration between the Film and Media Arts HTC kids. They worked so closely together on films that it was sometimes hard to distinguish who had which major.
One of the things I liked about OU/HTC was that the students all thrust themselves into making films from the very first year and people took on all kinds of roles in the projects… writing, camera work, set design, sound, acting, casting, …
A really fun activity that OU did was the annual Shootout, where they were given a genre, a prop to use, and one line of dialog and had 48 hours to make a film. I am not sure whether this still happens in the COVID age, but it sure seemed like fun.
If you’d like to see the result of some of these films that my son worked on, search YouTube for WhiteCrowFilms. WhiteCrowFilms - YouTube
“Fun With Alcohol” was their freshman film, but please check out the BTS (Behind the scenes) to see how it all came together! Their senior film, “Game Night,” actually won a huge award at the Ivy Film Festival and got the attention of Roger Ebert, who tweeted that it was “Altmanesque.”
Another example of a fun shoot-out film is the “musical” Detonate. Detonate - YouTube
Anyway, good luck to your daughter. I think HTC is FANTASTIC.
Thank you so much! I so appreciate you taking the time to reply and post links! Mine hasn’t added any of the films she has written or directed to IMDb yet so it is only acting credits but this is her Mira Steuer - IMDb but the film info festivals etc. is on mirahsteuer.com. I know we need to get that all together and update but she never knew she should add the films that won awards to IMDb she just figured she would wait until college.