D has a few days to decide which program she would like to try. It seems like GC has a “group project” feel to it whereas Honors seems more based on actual academic study/ seminars. Her intended major is physics.
You might get more reponse’s if you post your question on reddit dot com /r/gatech
Current students post over there.
S, is in GC right now and loving it. He had the same alternatives and chose GC, no regrets. GC is a great way to transition to college life and your D will make friends forever.
As a current Georgia Tech student who turned down Grand Challenges for the Honors Program, I can only say that I’m very glad of this decision. A lot of the GC projects are medical based, and I have no interest working in that side of engineering. GC currently has a stronger sense of community, but in neither program do all the freshman know each other. Starting next year, HP will have all freshman and some upperclassmen in a living-learning community on Tech’s West Campus, while GC has the freshmen on East Campus and upperclassmen on West Campus. Each program has events open only to students in it. While I really liked that HP would force me to take classes in topics unrelated to my major, I don’t think you could go wrong choosing either program. Certainly a lot of GC kids do plan on dropping it before their second year at Tech, but there are also a lot of kids who love it. If you aren’t into group projects and want a more laid-back program, HP would probably be a better fit for you.
Hope this helps!
My D is interested in physics and astronautical engineering and mechanical engineering. She has been on many group projects in high school and had to deal with frequently being the leader by default because many “slackers” chose to take this class as an easy A . It was frustrating to have people be involved in a group project where your grade depended on three other people actually doing their work and many times they simply did not do their share. Yes this was high school but I have heard about projects in college having the same issues. She is looking for smaller groups in certain classes and this is what many honors programs at other schools provide. How are the sizes in the Tech honors classes? Do you see a clear benefit with taking these honors core classes?
Talking to my S right now and he told me convey a couple of things about GC.
- Definitively GC projects are not medical based. His group project is on energy conservation. Each group picks the project that they want to work on. at thing is that GC sponsors field trips for the teams. One group this year already went to England to a conference. My S team is heading to Tallahassee to attend a hackathon as part of their project to look for resources to develop apps for the program that they are assembling.
-GC is a group of high energy, proactive kids if you are in GC most likely you won’t be a slacker.
-GC is mainly a one year program , but kids can pick to continue for as long as they want.
Good luck with the decision! All the options are good.
This is a really tough decision as my D has also looked into the LLC SMART for the College of Sciences. A little worried that the Grand Challenges will occupy too much time and take away from her other classes.
OP- I have a quick question. Has your daughter been accepted to either Honors or GC? I didn’t think acceptances were sent out until March. I ask because both programs are selective. GC only takes 110 students out of the freshman class. As a side note the GC students are most certainly not slackers- GC Class of 2013 had 40 valedictorians in it.
Honors Program is also very selective. I don’t know the exact numbers but I do know that not everyone invited to apply is selective for the honors program. My suggestion for your daughter is to apply to both programs and then make a decision based on acceptances. if she gets accepted to both then I suggest she try and do the overnight visits for both programs. After doing an overnight with GC my daughter said her decision was easy since she loved the students, administration who run the program and the program.
An additional note- this Spring semester the Honors Program invited GC and Presidential Scholars to enroll in 10 of their class offerings.
I don’t have time right now to post more about GC but will for the benefit of others looking at GC. My D is a freshman and she says GC is the best part of her experience at GT so- hands down she would make the same choice again.
Good luck.
Isn’t the entire school an honors program?
@itsv Yes the application deadline for both GC and Honors is February 9th extended from January 31. D is not going into the engineering school and is not interested in medical issues but rather is more interested in research. I suppose she is concerned she will get stuck in projects with people who do not pull their weight as has happened in high school and as reported by a current GT senior in biomedical engineering. Just because you have really smart kids in a group doesn’t mean they will be hard workers. Our class valedictorian spent most of his time at the community college racking up easy weighted A’s so being top of the class does not mean that a person is going to pull their weight on group projects. The idea of smaller class size especially for classes like physics and calculus 2 seems appealing.
HP accepted about 10% of applicants last spring, so you’re not going to necessarily be faced with the decision of choosing between the programs.
I can tell you that according to some of my friends, there are GC projects dealing mainly with public policy, so you definitely don’t have to be an engineer for either program.