<p>I am looking like maybe a UCLA freshmen next year, and I was wondering: should I apply to the College Honors Program? Anyone have any experiences, any advice whether its good or bad? How much extra work and how hard :/</p>
<p>If you want. I mean it’s not bad, but not anything special. Kinda like a gold star on your diploma and extra (more personalized) graduation ceremony. I guess roughly half the entering freshmen class gets into Honors, but only a few hundred actually graduates with it.</p>
<p>The downside is just that it’s a few extra courses. Other schools do have a more cohesive program. UCI seems to have a great CHP for people interested in those sort of things (e.g., dorming with other honors students, activities).</p>
<p>The amount of work can VARY a lot by your choices. You only need 40 units (12 being upper div) for the course version (i.e., not thesis). Freshman cluster takes care 15 units already. Some regular classes might be honors and it’s not even designated with a letter in the course name. And you have honors sections, which can be a 10 pg research paper for the quarter… or several paragraphs that are just summaries of multiple 1 hour seminars. Harder ones are the Honors Collegium (which you need 2, but the cluster satisfies 1).</p>
<p>So yeah, clusters are great value. You get 3 GEs, Writing II, and 15 Honors credit. The bad way to go about it is to take all 40 units of classes just for the sake of honors and it doesn’t fulfill anything else (GE, major, minor, etc.).</p>
<p>I’ll admit that it’s pretty tricky finding courses with honors credit though.</p>