If my daughter had to pick, I think she would go with Engineering Honors but just wondering, is it difficult to do both? And how does that work with housing? I think she would prefer Mosher with the other Engineering kids but it looks like University Honors requires other dorms.
I’ve heard it’s very time consuming to do both; I hear overwhelming go with Engineering Honors.
If you haven’t accepted one of the Honors programs by now, you may have messed up your Housing. Pretty sure LLP and Honors housing stuff is done.
@TXRunningMom dorm selection times have started going out, for ‘regular’ Students (nom LLP and Honors dorms). Hopefully your daughter accepted one of the Honors programs already, so she’ll be living in an Honors dorm?
@52AG82 , she has accepted engineering honors we think! Hahaha She is at a friend’s house tonight so I don’t know if she has gotten any emails about housing. We should have a pretty early timestamp because I signed her up as soon as she was admitted. At this point though, I doubt if we’ve done anything right. She missed the email about accepting University honors but they extended her deadline to Monday. So now she needs to decide if she does both or just engineering.
@TXRunningMom here’s what we heard, from a recent Business Honors graduate. He was telling us he considered himself to be pretty smart, but also social. He started out in University Honors, and his words-“It was like the Big Bang Theory on steroids!” Exact words. He came in after midnight one Friday night, and most of his hall was in the meeting/common/rec area. They were heavily engaged in statistical equation races on the white board. He said he’s never met smarter people in his life.
Not knocking anyone-my daughter is g/t, those are ‘her people’, as she says-but she is also social, wants to pledge a sorority. When she found out University Honors required a specific dorm, she decided not to even apply.
And we know a friend that started our in both Eng Honors and UHonors. He said it was a hassle trying to attend all mandatory functions, and there were a lot of ‘fluffy’ cupcake-type socials for UHonors. He dropped UHonors quickly and is happy to only have Eng Honors.
Food for thought…
@TXRunningMom The best way to describe the two is that engineering honors is “more chill” as my son would say, and university honors is “pretty uptight.” University honors requires a class, a particular dorm where you cannot pick your own roommate, dorm specific functions, that you maintain honors student council membership (which has its own list of stuff you have to attend to do that), etc. Engineering honors just has a total credit hour requirement which is pretty easy to attain, a requirement that you attend one function/semester, and do some research. (however, once you get in a major some of them add a few more requirements) You do not have to live in Mosher for engineering honors however some people prefer it.
@52AG82 and @pbleigh , thank y’all SOOOO much for your responses! These were exactly what I was hoping to get from my College Confidential buddies!! I will have her read your posts when she gets home and we’ll talk about it. I’m worried about her getting into too many extra activities in college; she is going to want to join everything possible. She was able to do everything under the sun in her small high school and easily maintain her grades. TAMU will be a whole different ball game though and I’m not sure she realizes that. She is smart but she has never really been challenged. I don’t want her to get in over her head first semester.
@TXRunningMom of course I don’t know your daughter, but if you say she’s been in a small school, hasn’t really been challenged much, I would say definitely don’t do University Honors. The stress and pressure from living with some of the smartest kids on campus could be detrimental.
My daughter is coming from a very large, highly competitive high school, and when she found out UHonors required the dorm, she wanted NO part of that. She won’t find much social life in UHonors dorm…it’s all about studying and getting ahead. Not that that is a bad thing, but it sounds like your daughter wants to be involved on campus.
My two cents…stick with Engineering Honors.
@TXRunningMom My son also came from a small high school however he is fairly introverted and did not want to join everything, but has made time for what he most wanted to join. He seems to think that not many engineering kids stay in university honors so its mostly liberal arts majors. He says that that the engineering curriculum is time consuming enough without also having to go to a bunch of miscellaneous functions. He says some engineering kids started in university honors just for a pre-freshman year international trip and/or a scholarship but then dropped it. He doesn’t think the university honors kids are the smartest on campus as a group, because they are mostly liberal arts kids which he says has a much easier schedule; he thinks engineering honors has that mantle. He has maintained his honors student council membership because they changed it a year ago to allow engineering honors activities to partially count for honors student council credit but he says that too is mostly university honors kids because they are required to maintain active status as a requirement of university honors. My son ended up dropping it before freshman year even though he got a waiver from living in the dorm, because he felt the focus was to get the kids to have a more well rounded liberal arts style education and he was just not interested.
@pbleigh , thank you, thank you! This is good stuff for us to know.
Thank you everyone for your comments and thoughts! She has decided to just do Engineering Honors only. 
@TXRunningMom I think that’s a great decision!