Hello all!
After attending an ARO FSU presentation at my school, I’m reconsidering my previous refusal to enroll in the Honors program (sadly a few days after the consideration deadline for the Presidential Scholars program, though).
Though the ARO presentation was convincing, I’m very concerned about the difference in workload between Honors and non-Honors. As a student who went through high school perpetually stressed due to a schedule maxed out with AP courses, I’m afraid to do that to myself again in college. This isn’t to say that I’m afraid of working hard to succeed, but I’m very confused about the requirements of the Honors Program and am not sure whether the early selection of classes is worth the additional effort.
Any input on this from current or former FSU Honors students? I’m majoring in IT, if that affects how my experience with the program will be.
My son just applied to the honors college. I’m responding just to chit-chat, I don’t actually have any real info like the FSU people would. Anyway, we have the same concern for him that you have for yourself – he overloaded on APs last year and it burned him out a bit. He was able to keep his grades up but he actually had to drop a sport he loved to play. So we don’t want him to have that happen at the college level.
My impression (for what it’s worth, lol) is that the honors program offers advantages, and only presents more difficulty to the extent that you want to pursue it. Advantages are early course selection (a biggie!), involvement in the honors community (they seem to have their own events and do things together as a group at times), opportunity to live in Landis Hall (not sure that is important to my kid), interaction with specially selected professors (could be good for recommendations down the road), smaller class sizes where possible (if there’s an honors section of a particular course, it will be limited in size compared to the regular class.), and specially offered coursework, I think held in Landis Hall.
Meanwhile you need to keep your grades up, to 3.0 I think (which you’d want to do anyway!), and if you want “honors in the major” there are other requirements for that. (that’s the part where you would decide if you want to do significant extra work) That isn’t required though.
Anyway, hopefully someone who has experience will weigh in.
As a student in the honors college, p much what Trisherella said.
I compare honors classes not as: normal high school class : AP class but as normal high school class : honors class. The main difference is the students who are also in your class; they tend to be a little more focused. Honors is literally only what you put into it. You only have to take ~5 honors courses during your time at FSU - that equals less than one a semester.
I can’t stress enough how 100% worth it it is, just to get priority registration. If you’ve done AP classes, honors college classes truly aren’t going to be any more difficult.
My daughter is in the honors program. She said that you pick which subjects to take honors classes in, and, in some ways, they actually feel easier because the content is the same, but since the class is much smaller, you tend to be more engaged in it. You do have a bit more work in the honors classes, but if you take something you are interested in, that shouldnt be a problem. She very much enjoys and recommends the honors program.
I can confirm that there is an honors student association, and Landis is in a good location. Overflow honors students live in dorms that are connected to Landis. It made a huge campus much smaller and more personal for my out of state daughter and helped her “belong” quickly. I didnt love her dorm room, but she was happy with it, it was small. The rooms vary, some are bigger than others. It looks like they had to cut things up to install the bathrooms in between rooms, i would guess that originally there was a big communal bathroom.
Getting to know professors in small sections of classes is definitely a bonus.
Do it.
The workload is totally manageable (S took 16 hours and had a very time consuming EC, and still managed Dean’s List and a girlfriend). And the benefits are worth every bit of it. Without honors registration, my son would have never gotten into two of the classes he needed this semester; Landis is a great dorm (a bit small, as noted, but without some of the issues other dorms have, like noise or musty smells or non-stop partying) and the location is right in the middle of everything. And honestly, Jeff Badger really looks after his Honors kids. S had a specific issue he was getting frustrated with early on, and Badger talked him through handling it without making a huge deal about it.
And the Honors designation on your diploma will look very nice on your resume.
Just chiming in about the awesomeness of Jeff Badger. He has been super helpful to my daughter, as well.