<p>"UW has a well-known program.</p>
<p>From the UW website:
The University Honors Program enhances the UW experience through small classes, individualized advising, a community of Honors students, and much more. The application process is competitive: Last year, the Honors Program reviewed over 2,700 applications for 225 spaces"</p>
<p>Yep, I was going to mention UW!</p>
<p>More USF info -
Priority Registration, small classes, a number of accelerated programs, $500 annual honors scholarship, research opportunities, orchestra for non-music majors.
Housing is in new 7 story dorm with suites, kitchen and lounge on each floor, dining, coffee shop and convenience store on first floor.
[Honors</a> College at USF - Research|Travel|Leadership|Scholarships](<a href=“http://honors.usf.edu/]Honors”>http://honors.usf.edu/)</p>
<p>I found the following programs in the UC:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>[Honors</a> Degree Program | EECS at UC Berkeley](<a href=“http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Programs/honors.html]Honors”>Honors Program | EECS at UC Berkeley)</p></li>
<li><p>[About</a> The CHP](<a href=“http://www.honors.uci.edu/about.php]About”>http://www.honors.uci.edu/about.php)</p></li>
<li><p><a href=“http://registrar.ucdavis.edu/ucdwebcatalog/academicinfo/honors.html[/url]”>http://registrar.ucdavis.edu/ucdwebcatalog/academicinfo/honors.html</a></p></li>
<li><p><a href=“http://honors.ucr.edu/[/url]”>http://honors.ucr.edu/</a></p></li>
</ol>
<p>No one has mentioned the Honors Program at Tulane University or UW-Madison or Emory University’s ‘Scholar’ Program. In addition there is Duke’s honors program and Washington University in St. Louis’s program, all outstanding schools, ranked in the top of the nation. I never have heard of Florida’s honor programs but they sound very respected!</p>
<p>britta - The title of the thread is for Public Universities. Tulane, Emory, Duke and WUSTL are all private.</p>
<p>There was a thread a while ago about the Robert E Cook Honors College at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and people posted good things about it. Strong academically but different in that it is small and residential and very nurturing. My post on the old thread -
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064246645-post4.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/1064246645-post4.html</a></p>
<p>Duke has an honors program? Heck, Duke <em>is</em> an honors program. ;-)</p>
<p>Schreyers Honor College at Penn State University</p>
<ol>
<li>A true honors college: Has its own Dean and administrative staff.</li>
<li>Students must present and defend a thesis in order to graduate from the Honors college.</li>
<li>Students are accepted to all the top graduate programs in the nation. (Harvard Law/med etc)</li>
<li>Guaranteed research opportunities and money for conferences.</li>
<li>Small guaranteed scholarship $3500 for the honors program but it is often supplemented by additional scholarships from individual departments.</li>
<li>Many honors courses.</li>
<li>Great perks: guaranteed honors housing, early registration, individual academic advising, many honors college activities and volunteer programs, study abroad.</li>
<li>Students are competitive for national awards (Fulbright etc)</li>
<li>The Honors college has recently not used SAT’s for admission. They focus on leadership, ethics, altruism but still manage to admit high SAT scoring students.</li>
<li>Penn State does not have a limit on credits for AP classes. Students can bypass many general education requirements and spend more time on classes they want and higher level classes. Many students are then able to double major in demanding programs such as science and engineering.</li>
<li>Penn State is a large university and with it’s size comes a great deal of varied research opportunities.</li>
<li>Many students turn down top ten schools for this program. </li>
<li>It is a well known and very well respected honors college within the academic and private sector circles.</li>
</ol>
<p>At my sons graduation I was absolutely blown away by the accomplishments of some of it’s students. The sky is the limit.</p>
<p>DS has applied to the Honors Colleges at UNC Asheville and Appalachian State. He is in the running for the honors program at UNC Chapel Hill, and he has applied for a scholarship at University of Alabama that automatically entails admission to the honors pogram.</p>
<p>Does anyone here have experience with any of those honors programs?</p>
<p>“They focus on leadership, ethics, altruism…”</p>
<p>Well, the altruism part lets DS out. Besides occasionally helping me deliver Meals on Wheels, he’s never done anything particularly altruistic. :(</p>
<p>I hear you, Lady D, lol!!</p>
<p>UNC-CH honors program does not have separate honors housing, which I think is a drawback for an OOS student at a state university, where so many kids come in knowing people already.</p>
<p>Both have honors programs.</p>
<p>My junior is interested in several public university honors programs, but for many, it appears that there is limited merit aid for OOS students. Discouraging, when you look at what OOS tuition is at these schools. </p>
<p>I would love to know if anyone had good luck with merit aid from an OOS honors program.</p>
<p>^^</p>
<p>I think you’re looking in the wrong area. Many big scholarships to OOS students aren’t awarded thru the honors colleges themselves…they are awarded thru the university.</p>
<p>for instance, my kids’ flagship awards big merit scholarships to high stats kids (OOS kids, too) who often are in the honors college. But, the honors college didn’t award the money, the university did.</p>
<p>
I think that’s a pretty bold statement to make, especially without offering any evidence or discussion to back it up.</p>
<p>Honors colleges are often oversold, the glossy pamphlets giving the impression a small LAC has been set up inside a larger university. Honors colleges do offer some very valuable perks and let you meet some of the top students at your college. But when you’re thinking of honors colleges the pitch is often that you’re getting an elite private education at the public school price. Regrettably this isn’t really the case.</p>
<p>Depending on the U’s program, what they offer may range from taking separate honors classes to taking just one honors seminar per semester. Some of the honors offerings may just be a special discussion section of the regular class (at many U’s classes can have 100-500 students, then everyone meets once a week in a smaller group with a TA). You really need to dig in to find what a particular school offers. And keep in mind honors college programs typically offer the small classes and top profs the brochures promise during the 1st two years of college, because it doesn’t take that many classes to come up with a set that will meet the lower-division requirements for most majors.</p>
<p>It is rare to find more than a token amount of offerings upper-division since the honors program simply doesn’t have enough faculty members to duplicate an entire major or set of majors. So the last two years most/all classes are taken with the rest of the students in the regular U’s classes. The teaching of the profs will be geared towards that level, the discussions and student involvement in class will be dominated by the regular students, and so on. And class sizes may balloon, too, if you’re in a larger public U and a popular major. How can any of this be considered an elite-quality experience?</p>
<p>Peer effects are big, too; when almost everyone around you at school is a strong student you have lots of good examples of how hard to work, of extras like doing research or internships to get a leg up for post-college. If the top kids are a few hundred strong dispersed among tens of thousands at the U then good examples may be harder to see. When it comes to finding a job, employers are less likely to send recruiters to campus with a limited number of honors college seniors compared to the campus-full they’ll find at more highly regarded schools.</p>
<p>Honors colleges do offer some valuable perks in addition to the classes. Typical ones include registering for classes before everyone else so you get the classes you want (a perk worth its weight in gold!), special counselors, guaranteed housing, special library privileges. They will stamp your diploma with some indication of honors college or make a note on your transcript. But I would be skeptical of attending a college for its honors program in place of a more highly regarded U if finances are not an issue.</p>
<p>@mikemac – those are depressing considerations. Do you know of any honors colleges that are exceptions to the rule?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance!!</p>
<p>It is rare to find more than a token amount of offerings upper-division since the honors program simply doesn’t have enough faculty members to duplicate an entire major or set of majors. So the last two years most/all classes are taken with the rest of the students in the regular U’s classes. The teaching of the profs will be geared towards that level, the discussions and student involvement in class will be dominated by the regular students, and so on. And class sizes may balloon, too, if you’re in a larger public U and a popular major. How can any of this be considered an elite-quality experience?</p>
<p>I don’t know about all publics, but I do know this…</p>
<p>1) By the time you’re in your upper division courses, the under-achievers have largely been weeded out…especially for engineering, math, and other hard science courses. So, a bunch of honors courses aren’t really needed at that point. It’s not really true to suggest that at this point you’re getting a dumbed down experience. Absolutely not. (I guess maybe if the school was really inferior to start with…but I don’t think that’s the issue being discussed)</p>
<p>2) Often 300/400 level courses are either small or very regular size. My kids have never had a large 300/400 level class. Their 300/400 classes are like 8 kids, or 12 kids, or 25 kids. They’ve had **very **few large 100/200 level classes (like maybe 2 such classes that had like 60 kids in them.)</p>
<p>THANK YOU, as always, @mom2collegekids!!</p>
<p>I debated whether I should write this post, but lets take Schreyers Honor College as an example since it got a glowing review in post 68. I’m sure its a great program and students who attend are better off for having done so, but to imply that its just like attending an elite college is somewhat of a stretch.</p>
<p>Is it just like attending an elite, as Roger implied in the first post? You decide.[ul]
[<em>]Looking at the students that are accepted, the Schreyers pamphlet lists the 25%-75% SAT scores as 1960-2160. At Harvard, which is an example many people have in mind when they mention an elite, the 25%-75% SAT range is 2080-2370.
[</em>]Even if you assume the honors classes at Schreyers are the equivalent of those at an elite, turns out that you only need to take 6 honors courses your first two years and about 5 more the junior and senior years. That’s 11 classes your entire college career. At an elite college, of course, all of your classes are delivered by the elite college.
[<em>]The assumption those 11 classes are the same as at elites may itself be a stretch, because they describe what they call “Honors Option” to turn a regular course into one receiving honors credit. The brochure notes “Some honors courses are enriched versions
of regular Penn State offerings while others are unique to the honors curriculum”. Are these all equivalent to what an elite offers?<br>
[</em>]Schreyers offers about 250 honors classes according to their brochure. Taking these to be the equivalent of those an an elite, the Harvard student can choose from 985 classes that meet the Schreyers guidance of “(generally < 20)”, and have another 167 choices if you’re willing to go up to 39 students[/ul]I’m not trying to knock Schreyers here, its a wonderful opportunity for a lot of kids. But to argue that its just like going to an elite college, well…</p>
<p>In reply to an argument that once honors college kids start taking upper-division classes in the regular U they won’t be getting an elite-level experience anymore mom2collegekids writes
People always say this…</p>
<p>But think about what it means. Go to any reasonably solid college and look at the retention rate. At Penn State, home of Schreyers Honors College, the 2-year retention rate is 88%. The numbers are going to be similar at most good publics. </p>
<p>So for the reply above to be credible 88% of the kids admitted to Penn State must have been elite-quality students, and so on for the students admitted to other publics. Once the slackers are gone after two years the instruction can jump to the level provided at elite colleges. I find that hard to swallow.</p>