Engineering Colleges and Honors Programs - Are They Redundant?

It seems to me that engineering programs are de-facto honors programs. They typically have students with higher stats than the general population of their colleges and they usually have a more rigorous curriculum than some other majors.

That said, does it matter whether or not a student participates concurrently in an honors program and an engineering program? Some of the perks of honors are early course registration, but engineers typically have a rigid curriculum guideline to follow. Honors sometimes offers special housing with other honors students, but many colleges now offer engineering LLCs which would probably be more beneficial to engineers than an honors community. The downside of honors is that some programs require additional work, including a thesis. Sometimes this can be integrated with the engineering degree, sometimes it is completely separate.

It would be great to hear opinions from students who have successfully (or unsuccessfully) participated in both and also from students who passed on an honors opportunity. It would also be nice to hear from engineering industry experts about their opinions of the honors designation.

If you view this as a “downside”, then you shouldn’t do it. If you just want a job when you graduate, then you shouldn’t do it. Some people view this as an upside, especially if you want to enter research or graduate school.

At my wife’s liberal arts college, one had to get recommended to get to do a thesis - it was competitive. Professor’s don’t want to waste their time with tinkerers.

I recall in my department that there was a guy getting his BS from Schreyer honors college at Penn State who gave an interview talk about his research that was so awesome that he was going toe to toe with experienced PhDs. He’s been phenomenal. He got his masters part-time but is doing PhD level work. I also knew someone from Delaware Honors that did his PhD at MIT. I know a former professor who used to seek out exclusively honors students to work in his lab.

I had a engineer Senior student, Engineer advisor, and a professor discuss this issue. Here is the conclusion, take it for the first three semesters to get small general ed classes and prority registering. Honors college will always be looking for engineering students

Honors colleges are extremely variable. They can offer lots of advantages including smaller class sizes, better professors, and better housing. I’ll use two schools that my son was accepted to as illustrations.

Oregon State has one of the best honors colleges he ran across. Their intro courses are large, like most state flagships. The honors classes are small, and taught by the best professors including labs and discussions. In contrast to most other schools, there were honors offerings of engineering classes well into the curriculum. A thesis is required, but it is built into the curriculum, so it doesn’t add much to the overall length of the program. Honors students get priority in registration and have honors housing. Had he chosen OSU, he certainly would have participated in the honors program.

He ended up at Cal Poly. Their classes are all small and all taught by professors. The honors program adds non-engineering classes to a curriculum that’s already 20 hours longer than the typical CP degree. The housing option to live with honors students was no better (probably worse) than the engineering Living/Learning dorm he ended up in. The only advantage was priority registration. He elected not to participate.

The best honors programs simply emulate the advantages of smaller schools within a larger university. If a student already has those advantages and it simply adds bulk, then the benefits become pretty minimal.

You are correct. Thesis and research work can be amazing. My mistake. I should have said “challenge”, the additional work might be very difficult for engineering majors.

Engineering alone doesn’t get me the quieter, more centrally located housing; the early registration, which is important at a school of 40,000 undergrads; or the merit money that I get from my honors college.

Also, at least at Penn State, the engineering program is still huge within a huge school. If your goal is to make a big school seem smaller, engineering may or may not do that.

I think most honors programs will mean extra work in the non-engineering courses. That could be a good thing, especially if it is an an area of interest. However I do recall a mom of an honors engineering student (maybe Northeastern?) that said her son was very unhappy with intenser reading requirements in his honors humanities course.

What a good thread to start - we are exploring this topic not and have decided already that at least 1 honors program was more cons that pros for my DS (planned to pursue EE & CS). Applied to 1 that required an application a couple of weeks ago (not required to accept if he makes it). Seems some schools require specified classes, extra work that is unrelated to the engineering program. I think for schools under serious consideration it is important to get as much info as possible about what the program entrails and how it functions first year & beyond.

I agree. One school my S is considering is not high ranked but he was accepted into their honors program which does have perks (honors dorm and early move-in and class registration). They said very specifically that honors was not “more work” but the classes would be smaller and more in depth. My S sent in his letter to honors (you have to accept). Not long after, we found that he has to read a book over the summer and write an essay about it to turn in on the first day of class. They didn’t reveal a lot of the course details until he accepted the program. There are a lot of philosophical reading/writing requirements. He is reconsidering because as a Mechanical Engineering major he wants to focus his energy on required classes and activities. Not reading literature and writing essays (except when required for core classes). They also have an engineering living/learning community that does not require honors. We are still not sure.

My D17 was accepted to UMD and honors for Fall 2017, and reviewed their seven honors options. She chose Design Cultures & Creativity rather than the more generic University Honors. The coursework will satisfy her CORE course requirements, but she already had many of them taken care of through AP courses. The work itself will be outside her field.

The thing is, that’s exactly why she is so excited about it! It’s a multi-disciplinary program where she feels she can stretch herself beyond engineering. That’s something she was looking for in a school.

Personally, I’m wondering if she’ll be taking on too much (assuming she selects UMD.) But students always have the option to drop a specialized program in favor of University Honors – although DCC is a LLC, so not sure how that would work.

@MSMead – ooh that’s something - to learn about extra work only after accepting!! Can’t blame your son for reconsidering.

@NerdMom88 – UMD did seem to have several options which I think really a good thing. My DS chose CyberAces & is accepted though has not accepted enrollment. It seemed the best fit for him.

I agree that studying subjects outside of the engineering discipline is good for any student…unless it causes additional semesters. Completing an ABET accredited engineering program is not easy and requires more credits than many other majors. Adding honors coursework could be problematic…and expensive.

In our case, the cost is living expenses only for more than four years, since she has tuition remission. I’m more concerned with taking on too much.

Also, Maryland has that wonderful FLEXUS program, which provides support to women engineers without additional course requirements, but D was so excited about the DCC curriculum – that’s not gonna happen.

I am of the general opinion that an honors program that offers no real increase in educational “output” is not valuable. My own UG honors program, which I was a member of for 2 days, is a good example of no value. No research opportunities, and the Chem 101 class I was enrolled in started off with the professor saying "I’ll assume you folks already know the 101 stuff, so here we go . . . " I literally did not understand anything presented for the next 50 mins. And 15 mins later, I was in normal Chem 101.

And, anecdotally, I have interviewed idiots with an honors program on the degree. So the output is more on the person than the program.

Unfortunately these programs vary to such an extend that you cannot make any judgments on them until you actually enroll and experience it.

To me the housing would make the biggest difference. It it allows you a separate honors housing building or better yet a full separate section, then it might be worthwhile. If not, then I would not be inclined to have honors being a deciding factor of one school over another.

You can always try it and drop out if it is not that beneficial.

@nitro11 wrote:

@MassDaD68 wrote:

This is the way I am leaning to guide my S. I’m sure it’s much easier to drop honors than it is to join later. Give it a try for the first few semesters. If it is too burdensome, drop it.

@stem2017, if your S is accepted into honors and it includes special considerations for housing or classes it can’t hurt to try.

My D was in the honors program (not an honors college) her first year, and I think it allowed her to take some advanced calc and chem courses her first year. However, the GPA requirement to stay her school’s program is 3.7, which IMO is pretty high for an engineering major. After 3 semesters she has just over a 3.5 but decided that she didn’t want to stress about trying to bring it back up so is no longer active in honors. We are all completely fine with that decision.

Mature decision by your D @jmek15

It’s been mentioned before, but it really depends on the student and the university. Some universities really just give you priority registration and not much else, in which case I’d argue it’s not very valuable.

Some universities give priority access to things like research opportunities and other educational benefits. In that case it can be valuable but only if the student fully utilizes those opportunities.

For those reasons, it’s really difficult for me to assess what sort of weight to give to an honors program for the purposes of graduate admissions.

At the university I attend, the honors program (which I am in) seems to only offer minor benefits, benefits that you will only benefit from while in college. I say “seem to” because the only honors courses I’ve taken so far are calculus and engineering classes. I don’t see anything spectacular about the program, but I also see no reason to not be in it. It requires no extra work. Therefore, it offers no benefit to your resume, but it still offers the short term benefits. Shorter classes and priority registration. Honors housing is reserved for the most impressive in the honors program, just so the university can guarantee housing to the students it REALLY wants.
I think that “smaller classes” are sometimes over rated, but our honors freshmen engineering classes hold 20 students vs. 35 normally. This is pretty significant because at my university the freshmen engineering sequence is project based. These types of classes seem to nearly require interaction with your professor to be successful and get the most from the course.