Clemson Honors College // Acceptance Rates Inquiry

I’m a sophomore in high school currently (I know I know, “Get off these forums you’re too young, enjoy your life until you actually need to be worrying about this!” etc etc), but I can’t help the fact that I have a few simple questions about the college im 99% sure I will be attending in the future. I’m just seeking one or more knowledgeable individuals to answer these questions briefly to support my curiosity towards the college and my desire to ascertain how hard I may need to be working these next couple years, so off we go. I have researched briefly on the general web, but I can’t find certain parts of the necessary information.

What are the average stats (middle 50%) of ACT/SAT tests for the Calhoun Honors College at Clemson?

If you were to estimate, can you come up with a college that has a similar difficulty in admittance as the Honors College at Clemson as a freshman undergraduate?

What is the acceptance rate of the Clemson Honors College?

These questions may not even be possible to answer, but I figured if they were going to get answered, it’d be here. (Worth a try, right!)

Sincerely, Anonymous

I have never seen the admission rates for calhoun published. Nor have I seen the middle 50% stats. Clemson does state that the CHC minimum stats are 1320 and 30ACT. Also understand that unlike Clemson admissions which only considers, GPA, Test scores and class rank, CHC admissions is a wholistic review which also considers essays, EC etc.

Although no exact numbers on % acceptance to CHC, they are limited to filling about 250 spots per year for incoming freshman. Considering that 13,600 were admitted the percentage of admitted students who eventually took a spot in the CHC is 1.8%. Considering 3790 students enrolled the percentage of enrolled students that took a spot in CHC is 6.6%.

Clemson has become more and more competitive over the past years especially for OOS. Similarly it would make sense freshman admission to CHC has become more and more competitive. If you have the numbers, you need to take look at Clemson and see if there is good fit for you overall and then look at CHC. There is a separate tour you can do for CHC and you should do that so you can learn all CHC has to offer.

Good luck.

I think the essays are much more important to the Honors college. My son has a perfect ACT score, NMF, 14 AP classes, top 5% at an extremely competitive high school, Eagle Scout and Varsity athlete and he was not admitted to the honors college. But Clemson admissions offered him multiple scholarships adding up to $25,000 per year.
It was stange to get more money than we expected but not get an honors college invite.

He wrote all of his essays to the prompts and he is an excellent writer, so my thought is that he didn’t do a good job showing who he is in his essays. So when you visit, ask them exactly what they are looking for. It is clearly something different than just scores and grades. We have a daughter who is a junior and we are being very deliberate in asking each honors college questions with her.

@brentwoodmom It is crazy that he didn’t get into CHC.

@brentwoodmom Did he appeal? Did he call and ask what his application lacked? The students we know who did that got good answers that they could use in their appeal. Also, he can apply the first semester to get in and be in by January. The application is much simpler too.

When mine applied, were were told that test scores are used for initial eligibility, as @burghdad said, but after that it’s all about who the student is and the essays etc, meaning a perfect score candidate and a 1320 candidate have the essentially the same chance at selection.

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He did not appeal. He has decided not to attend Clemson. I just wanted to pass on what we had learned to OP.