<p>My niece is a junior at ASU. She was an excellent high school student and is an excellent college student, with a double major, as well. She opted NOT to apply to Barrett Honors, and made it sound as if Barrett Honors students have to do a ton of extra work. For example, when regular students have to write a 10 page paper, honors students have to write 25 pages. She basically made it sound like it is a heap of extra work without all that much benefit (except that it is beneficial for getting into grad schools).
Does anyone else have insight on this?
Also, when my son and I visited U of A, we got the impression from students there that for Engineering majors, many engineering courses are “high level” and count as requirements for their honors college. Students there made it sound like engineering and honors coincided very well. Does anyone know if the same thing is true at ASU?? My son is planning to major in Electrical Engineering.</p>
<p>For example, when regular students have to write a 10 page paper, honors students have to write 25 pages.</p>
<p>I think if that were true, then over 2700 kids wouldn’t be in the Barretts now. LOL</p>
<p>Yes, there is extra work, but not on the level she mentioned. The freshman Human Events (humanities/philosophy courses) you take fall and spring semester are a lot of thinking work, because the kinds of questions you’re grappling with aren’t ones with easy or quick answers, but the workload isn’t by any means hugely burdensome. </p>
<p>I think that ASU’s honors program has a significant number of advantages: access to honors courses (which are all quite small), opportunity to learn/live/play with other students who are also strong students, early registration every semester, loads of extra and special events made available to the honors community, internship and research opportunities, advising faculty links with every department, a beautiful new campus with great dorms/dining/classrooms and admin facilities, and a college administration that is closely connected to students. </p>
<p>There are a number of Engineering courses that have honors sections. You can always ask a professor for an honors contract, but you don’t need honors credit for every course you take. There are quite a few Engineering students at Barrett. (Biggest downside for engineering is that the Barrett campus is at one corner of the ASU campus, and Ira Fulton Engineering is at the opposite side. Bikes are pretty common.</p>
<p>I haven’t noticed any significant extra work, really. (Though I’m only a freshman.) Human Event only has three papers (in addition to readings, many of which I just read summaries of), and they’re only about 4-5 pages double spaced. After that, all you have to do is either take 36 credits of honors 18 lower division (of which Human Event counts as 6) and 18 upper division, and write a honors thesis. The thesis is probably the biggest imposition, as it is long and difficult to do. But other than that, I don’t think the honors courses are really significantly harder, and certainly not more work. I really think that the honors college can only enhance the experience.</p>
<p>The oversight in all of this is that it is, in fact, an Honors College. If you don’t want a rigorous education, then don’t apply. However, I am an entering Barrett student in the fall and have heard from counselors that the work load is not immense, and as was said above, there are far too many incredible benefits of the program to outweigh the supposed “downside” of extra work. In my opinion, any extra work is a new learning opportunity, and an opportunity to challenge yourself. It should not be looked at as a laborious negative.</p>
<p>Even though I did not make this topic, all of these posts are reassuring for me. I’ll admit that the prospect of entering Barrett intimidated me a little, but nevertheless, I am beyond excited to experience the numerous opportunities reserved to honors students. (hey we get to check out books for 30 days instead of 14!)</p>