As part of my college search, I am targeting schools with honors colleges. I was wondering if anyone could give me feedback of the best honors colleges in the nation? I have no specific criteria for ranking the honors colleges. I would just greatly appreciate if I could get a ranking of the top 5-10 honors colleges.
Thanks in advance.
Not exactly what you are asking for but this site might help…
Elsewhere on the same site: http://publicuniversityhonors.com/new-top-programs-by-category/
Given the information in your other thread, @BostonQ, I’d also suggest looking hard at Alabama. The combination of guaranteed merit aid and the honors college is a strong one if you are looking to self-finance your education.
Whenever you get your list together you’re going to have to dig a lot deeper.
Honors colleges can be a great choice for those attending a larger school. Honors colleges offer valuable perks and let you meet some of the top students at your college. However they are often oversold with glossy pamphlets implying a small LAC has been set up inside the larger university giving ann elite private education at the public school price. On this forum you’ll read posters who also say/imply that.
Depending on the program offerings may range from separate honors classes to taking just one honors seminar per semester. And some of the “honors” offerings may just be a special discussion section of the regular class (at many U’s you meet 2-3x a week in a large class with the prof, then everyone meets weekly in a discussion section with a TA). You really need to dig in to find what a particular school offers.
Keep in mind honors programs typically offer the small classes and hand-picked profs only the 1st two years of college. They can do this because doesn’t take that many classes to come up with a set that will meet the lower-division requirements for most majors. It is rare to find more than a token amount of upper-division classes since the honors program simply doesn’t have enough faculty members to create entire major(s). 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 the normal U level, the discussions and student involvement in class will be dominated by the regular students, and so on. Class sizes may balloon, too, if you’re in a popular major.
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 mark your diploma with special recognition.
If you’re going to put your faith in someone else’s list of the “top 10” programs then it isn’t clear what you will actually end up with.