My son just received an email inviting him to apply for the engineering honors program for next year (he will be a freshman). However, he is planning on joining the corps and between that and studying engineering, I am afraid the addition of honors might be too much. I wonder what advantage there actually is to being In the honors program. In the long run, does it really help that much? I actually discouraged him from doing university honors because it now takes so much time but I don’t know about the engineering honors program. Any advice? Thanks!
You get scholarships, study abroad aid, priority course selection and housing?
@oosmom, My son was accepted to Engineering Honors. Benefits include: priority registration, expanded course selection along with small course enrollment, undergraduate research opportunities, specialized advising, and the Fast Track graduate program. Seems a plus to me.
Apart from what is mentioned above, there is one other important thing which only insiders know. I’ve heard enough for me to confirm that it is more than a rumor that professor must write to the college of engineering explaining why they didnt give a student an A in honors. Now you may take that with a grain of salt, but after looking at many honors sections grade distributions its seems to be more than just a rumor.
I have never heard the write a letter to the dean about a grade theory - if you’re making that assumption based on grade distributions in honors courses, they have higher % of A’s & B’s due to the requirement of having a 3.5+ GPA to enroll in the course - these students tend to consistently score higher on exams, so they don’t punish them by making the curve higher due to achievement of fellow students. From the outside looking in, it appears easier to get an A or B, but there are no students in those classes that score lower than a 3.5 (B+/A-) thus there’s usually very few if any Cs earned vs a regular bell curve course -fewer As more Bs and Cs fewer Ds Fs. If those letters exist, I’m sure there’s lots of honors students who would love to stop putting extra study time in! Did you find some rock solid validation to your theory?