I’m a pretty good student who is a “likely candidate” for the honors program. Got a few questions:
How much harder is honors in terms of time required and straight up difficulty?
Is it possible to do honors as well as Greek Life or is that unrealistic?
And is honors the same for all majors?
Thanks
My D is a 2nd year student, Int’l Business major in Honors College. Based on her comments:
For many classes, Honors sections probably aren’t much “harder” than non-Honors sections. Her two Honors English courses required a lot of reading and several papers, but not more than she expected (and there’s no way to accurately compare unless she had a syllabus for a non-Honors section). But since one class had 15 students and the other nine, she did need to be well prepared and ready to participate (nowhere to hide in that small of a class if you hadn’t finished the reading).
Her roommate and another friend think that the Honors Math classes are much harder than non-Honors – perfect for Math or Engineering majors but might be a heavy lift for kids who are good but not great in math (e.g., she is taking non-Honors Vector Calc).
D had Honors Accounting one semester, non-Honors the other, and with the same teacher, so that might be the best comparison. She didn’t think that the Honors version was more difficult or moved much faster than the non-Honors. What she did note was a difference is the students’ attendance: It was rare for a student to cut the Honors Accounting class (about 20 students), but quite a few cut the non-Honors class (40-45 students). To be fair, the non-Honors one was an 8 AM class, so that could have contributed.
She had a couple of other Intro Business classes that were honors sections, and again it seemed like the benefits were their small size (15 or so), everyone was prepared and interested, etc.
She has several friends (male and female) in Greek life and they all seem to be doing well. If a social fraternity turns out not to be what you want, there are at least 3 professional fraternities (I think that’s what they’re called) for business students.
To graduate with the Honors designation, students have certain requirements from different categories of classes. Everyone has the same overall structure, but the courses they choose to meet the requirements might vary dramatically. You can read more in this section of the website: http://schc.sc.edu/academics
One comment on math. My D felt she got great teachers in the honors classes. Though they didn’t make a big thing of it, lots of her upper level math classes also had non-honors students in them or the non-honors section was the same/same teacher, so mostly upper level math is just hard 
Some of the honors seminars are very specific, whether just a special interest of teacher or just a more narrow focus. I think some of these can have more work than other classes, but you don’t take them if you aren’t interested in topic. For instance, D took Zombie Apocalypse class and it actually got pretty academic with cultural, anthropologic, bio/medical/plague angles including science of disaster, etc. It was not just about Walking Dead! Again, this is not a class you have to take although I guess it fit some requirement - just not for her major. Then she took Bookmaking - not hard (academically) at all and she is artsy so loved that.
D preferred small discussions classes, so HC classes were definitely more enjoyable to her if not easier. If you don’t prefer papers over tests you might feel differently. D only had one honors teacher she didn’t like - all others seem to be some of the best in the department. She was double major. Her second major had fewer options in HC and she liked all but intro - which by very nature was larger.
@LuckyCharms913 comment about attendance made me chuckle. D had history class with newer professor. He started off taking attendance and then stopped since, as he told the class, the honors kids showed up or emailed ahead - unlike in his regular section. So I do think there is a level of engagement in honors classes that you don’t always find elsewhere, even at intro level courses. (Also have friend that teaches in BA school that would agree based on attendance in her class.)
She had a number of friends who participated in Greek life and others who did a lot with student government, ambassadors, etc that also take up a lot of time (some did both). HC advisors when D went through actually advised freshmen to stick to regular course load in order to have time to get invested in other activities.
The others covered the Honors difficulty, so I will cover the Greek side. I was in a social frat, a professional frat, and the Honors College. Rushing a frat can be pretty time consuming and the requirements are inflexible, so you may want to factor that in when you think about balancing school with extracurriculars. I ended up going inactive on the social frat and getting very involved with the professional frat. The professional frats offer a mix of social, community service, and professional activities and they can be just as cohesive and engaging as social frats. That said, the social frats are a great way to meet people freshman year. Between rushing and mixers, you will build a huge network of people at USC within a few months. If you feel like you can handle classes during the day and frat activities in the afternoons and evenings, then I would strongly encourage rushing a social and/or business frat. One word of caution: if you decide to double up, do not try to rush both in the same semester.
all of these responses are very helpful. I am 90% I will be attending SCAR and coming from Nashville and a school that doesn’t send many there, gonna need a lot of help lol. thanks