Baylor Honor's College

Colleges and Universities A-Z Baylor University
1

I applied to Baylor’s Honor’s College and BIC programs yesterday, so I have a couple questions hopefully some people will be able to answer!

  • I know there is no established deadline for applying to HC/BIC, but will it be less likely I get in since I applied so late? (My stats are: GPA 4.479/5.0 weighted, SAT 1440 w/ 730 R / 710 M, pre-med track w/ major in Bio, received 84k scholarship to attend Baylor)
  • Do you recommend housing in the HC? Which hall / village is most popular or liked by students?
  • Does getting into the HC/BIC program provide additional scholarships to students merely based off their acceptance into the programs?
  • How long does it take to hear back from admissions into HC/BIC? Online it said on a weekly/monthly basis, but I’m not sure if I should expect to hear back sooner this late in the game.
  • Are the HC/BIC programs overly demanding, or do students still have enough time to do ECs? I was hoping to rush, join Army ROTC, and potentially club/intramural basketball or track if possible.

I know these are a lot of questions, but basically I had no idea Baylor’s HC/BIC program was still able to accept students this late in the game, so I never bothered to check if I could still apply, as I assumed the deadline had long passed. My admissions counselor was the one who informed me I could still apply. I’m from CT so I only visited Baylor once and did not ask any of these questions because I did not think I was able to apply to the HC/BIC programs at the time, again assuming the deadline had passed. If anyone has any helpful information / personal experience / insight, that would be greatly appreciated!! Thank you (:

2
  1. BIC will most likely be harder to get into due to the university only accepting 200 students per year, however, I know from personal experience that students in BIC have significantly lower GPA's than those in the Honor's Program, therefore the HP would be better for Med school application purposes
  2. Absolutely housing in the honors program if you're seeking an academic community. If you want to rush or be in more of the social scene, then you should probably stay in a traditional first year dorm. Theres only two honors dorms, Memorial for girls and Alexander for boys. Most popular for girls non-honors is Collins and for boys is Martin or Penland
  3. I would expect to hear back by early to mid may. This is when they finish waitlisted honors applicants review and other generic admissions processes
  4. BIC is hard to keep a high GPA. Definitely the more intriguing of the two, but professors tend to try and keep their class averages low. However, not many honors kids rush. The frat/sorority scene here is big, time consuming, and expensive. Some honors professors are very against greek life and will look down upon student involved for not taking their education seriously (and unfortunately those involved typically do hold lower GPA's in honors classes) Not much experience with ROTC, but inter-murals should not be a problem. The college is pretty divided into the honors kids and those who are there to do the bare minimum to get the degree. HRC and HP will keep you on track with like minded individuals to get into a good med school. If you don't surround yourself with that, it will be easy to fall into a crowd of "c's get degrees" mentality.