HONORS COLLEGE & MERIT SCHOLARSHIPS

<p>I just wanted to add my 2 cents to the discussion. I'm a freshman at UNC this year, from out of state, in the honors program, and on a Carolina Scholars scholarship. I love UNC and all that it has to offer, including a diverse and passionate student body, a wide range of academic opportunities, and many different social outlets. In this respect it is an exciting place to go to school, and I would highly recommend it. </p>

<p>The honors program is a great opportunity to get into smaller classes with great professors, and I really appreciate that we try to make it as open to everyone as possible -- students not in the program can sign up for honors classes and people who don't get into the honors program during the freshman admissions process can apply to it for their sophomore year. This eliminates a lot of the exclusivity and elitism that could be a potential turnoff in many honors programs. </p>

<p>From an oos perspective, there really is not much of a dichotomy between in-staters and out-of-staters and we don't walk around with big signs on us declaring our residency status. Sure, there is a pretty big tuition difference, but UNC is still amazingly cheap compared to most private schools, and it is one of the few places where students can get a world-class education for an affordable price. </p>

<p>I also wanted to dispell the myth that there are a lot of big classes here at Carolina...that simply isn't the case. I'm a tour guide, and we make sure to give our visitors the following statistics about class size: only 5% of classes are greater than 100 students, only 12% are greater than 50 students, and over 50% are less than 20 students. In most cases only the introductory course to a major will be a lecture, and even these break down into recitation sections of 20 or less. I have never taken a lecture here and I don't plan on it in the future (granted, I was lucky to come in with a fair amount of AP/other credits), so lectures are avoidable if you like smaller classes. My classes (non-honors as well as honors) have all fallen between 7 and 30 students.</p>

<p>Anyway, as you can tell, I love UNC, I don't regret turning down Harvard, Yale, and Duke to come here, and I hope that you will all take the opportunity to come visit us so you can see why we are so happy about our school. </p>

<p>Best of luck to all of you trying to make these difficult decisions about college, and I hope you give Carolina the consideration it deserves!</p>

<p>Hey COtarheel, good to hear from oos students.It seems that you really love UNC. Are you from Colorado?
Just a few questions.....do you usually take 2 Hons. classes and 3 regular classes each semester? And do you get priority registration for all of your classes or only the Hons. classes. Also can you take 2 Hons. classes + 1 Hons. seminar in each semester?
As an oos Carolina Scholar you are probably paying next to nothing, and you are very lucky to get a great education at a bargain price, and Congratulations on that, but that still does not make $27,000 a bargain price for others.
Being an oos, and in the Honors program, are most of your friends from within the Honors program, or mostly oos, or a random mix of everything. Because I did hear from another OOS student that all of their friends were oos. </p>

<p>And lastly, did you really get accepted to Harvard and Yale?</p>

<p>COtarheel: Well put! Thanks for all that good information, which means so much especially when coming from a current student.</p>

<p>Hello COtarheel
Came back to check and see if you had replied, and ended up reading my post again. I do not like how it sounds, so I did want to explain that it was dashed off in a hurry, and had too many questions, but that's because I have too many questions, and am always in a hurry :)</p>

<p>Also please don't take offence at the last question, I am always surprised when people give up HYPS etc. You must be quite an amazing student.</p>

<p>I'm glad my previous post could be helpful to some of you. chocoholic brought up some good questions that deserve some answers so I'll take a shot at those -- and by the way don't worry about the tone of your message. It's important to ask good questions when you are trying to make such a big decision. </p>

<p>In any case, here is my best shot at some answers:
1. Yes I am from Colorado (Boulder)
2. The only requirement of the honors program is that students must take at least two honors classes per year, which is fairly easy as a freshman, but gets a little harder in the later years. There actually aren't that many honors classes offered each semester. Just to give you an idea, the list of Fall 2005 honors classes can be found at this link: <a href="http://www.honors.unc.edu/fall.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.honors.unc.edu/fall.html&lt;/a>. Some of them are just seminar sections of classes that are usually taught as lectures. For example, last semester I had the class Environment and Society, which has ordinarily around 150 students (but does break into small recitations), and my honors section had 15 and was taught by the same professor (a great teacher by the way -- I'd recommend the class in either form). In any case, it was a great opportunity to discuss the material more in depth. Other honors classes are unique to the honors program and can be quite interesting. I'm in an honors freshman literature class this semester, and I took an honors freshman seminar on university policy last fall, both of which are great classes. </p>

<p>But overall most of your classes will not be honors. Although honors students tend to be very engaged and high achieving, the non-honors classes have also been great in my experience. Again, the take-home message I would like to send is that there isn't much of a feeling of elitism and exclusivity that differentiates honors students from others. Honors students don't walk around with big signs on them either, and it doesn't come up much in conversation in my experience. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>I don't believe that you are capped at two honors courses per semester, although you can only sign up for two during the priority registration time. Later you can add more I believe if you are interested.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, as an oos on scholarship I am not paying a whole lot to go here, so I can't really speak from experience on the value of regular oos tuition. I will say that like the guide books tell you, UNC gives a lot of bang for the buck. In my case, UNC was the only public school I applied to so the difference was particularly noticeable. I know that the decision is different for every student, but I would say that for most people, there is not a $15000 between UNC and any other private school you could possibly consider. I did get accepted to Harvard and Yale, and a lot of people back home (and on these message boards, incidentally) thought I was crazy for turning down either of those for the money. Almost a year through my Carolina experience, I have absolutely no regrets. I am challenged in all my classes, and there is a vibrant, diverse, passionate student body to complement the great academics. If you are looking at other quality state schools, I have less of a baseline to help you out with comparisons, so it will have to suffice for me to continue to tell you how much I love Carolina. Come visit if you don't believe me!</p></li>
<li><p>Good question about the mix of my friends. As far as in-state vs. oos, I have more instate friends than oos (there are many more of the former so the odds are better in general, right?). For better or for worse, people from as far away as Colorado are somewhat of a rare breed around here, so it gave me a bit of leverage when trying to find friends during the first weeks of school, so lots of in-staters took pity on me and became my friend. I will say that most of my friends are either scholars or in the honors program, but that isn't because we self-segregate at all. It just so happens that these two programs give many opportunities to see the same people at lots of different events early in the year, so it's only natural that we would be come friends. In addition, since the honors program is relatively small, I have been in up to three classes with the same people already in my second semester here, so that will naturally make us closer. Like I said, we don't walk around with signs saying "scholar" and "honors", so most people don't know and don't care to find out. I also have met many people who aren't in either program who are wonderful and with whom I am very close. </p></li>
<li><p>I did get accepted to H and Y, incidentally, although I received no financial aid for either and the thought of going into $160,000 of debt rather repulsed me, as you might imagine. I don't think I'm missing out on too much stuff by doing my undergrad at UNC, although I can't have the satisfaction of "dropping the H-bomb" as the Harvard kids refer to telling people their alma mater. Oh well, there's always grad school, right?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Sorry for the long-winded reply, I hope it helps. Feel free to ask any more questions, but be warned that I may continue to pontificate as I deem necessary ;) Again, best of luck to all of you as you hear your admit decisions and make those agonizing choices of which matric card to send back.</p>

<p>Hi, I am also an oos acceptee, and I think your post is so very helpful. Thanks for all the details, you answered a lot of my un-asked questions COtarheel.
And thanks chocoholic I guess for asking some of my questions.</p>

<p>COtarheel, do you know what you will do in the summer....is UNC helpful with internships, or is it impossible to help 27,000 students?</p>

<p>Do you know where alumni of UNC have found jobs, and what the placement rate for graduating seniors is, along with starting salaries. I suppose these are ridiculous questions. But my parents want to know.</p>

<p>Do UNC alums have a strong national presence, or since they are 82% local, end up having a local presence. I think that people that do not venture far from home for college, may do the same after graduating.</p>

<p>Thank you COtarheel for your time.</p>

<p>Oh, one more Q (for now)
when did you find out that you were a Carolina scholar, becoz a lot of kids on this board are waiting.....should we give up hope now that it is March 30?</p>

<p>Oh, one more Q (for now)
when did you find out that you were a Carolina scholar, becoz a lot of us on this board are waiting.....should we give up hope now that it is March 30?</p>

<p>well so you guys have me addicted to this site again...I thought I had fought through it after my own struggle last April, but it's that time of year again so I'm back to help out a little. I'm glad my previous posts have helped, and I'll take a shot at the new questions as well. </p>

<ol>
<li><p>I don't quite know what I am doing this summer, and that is a great question. I applied to be a TA at Johns Hopkins University's CTY summer program for talented youth, and I'm hoping I will be accepted, although it is quite competitive I understand. If I don't get in, I will likely be back home in Colorado making myself useful. That does lead to a broader discussion of career services, which I will talk about briefly. We do have a great office here to help students find summer internships and jobs once they graduate. They are very open and helpful, and provide many services to students. They hold frequent recruiting events where employers come to meet with and interview students, and the will review resumes and hold mock interviews to hone your job hunting skills. There is also a very very helpful website careers.unc.edu, that has a huge database for jobs and internships. Honestly, though, you will find similar services at most if not all of the top colleges, so I don't think this is really something to get too excited about in particular at UNC, even though it is a great service. They are indeed very personal and do have walk-in hours and you can schedule counseling appointments where they will coach you and discuss future plans.</p></li>
<li><p>UNC alums find jobs in many different areas. I honestly can't quote you stats on placement rates or starting salaries, although I bet the information is available somewhere. I did read an article several years ago in the Wall Street Journal that released the results of a survey that showed that your undergraduate institution really doesn't matter too much in your success with finding jobs, the theory being that successful people will be successful wherever they go to school. Having turned down several higher-ranked schools to come to UNC, I am hoping they are right, and I'm not too worried. Being a freshman, I really haven't had too much experience trying to use the Carolina name to find a job, so I can't help you too much, but I did somewhat go against conventional wisdom by picking UNC and I don't feel too bad about it yet, so I wouldn't either. UNC does have a very good reputation and we do send students to the best graduate schools, medical schools, and law schools. Sorry I don't have any numbers to back up my statements, so you may have to do some more research if you are really concerned.</p></li>
<li><p>One of my feelings on Carolina's weaknesses is the fact that 75% (with transfers) come from in-state, so it does have somewhat of a regional feel and less of a national presence than many private schools. So that is a good point you bring up. People back home think that UNC is the University of Northern Colorado, which isn't in quite the same league in my opinion. But it is well known in the east, and there are alumni clubs in many cities around the country. Go to alumni.unc.edu to find out about opportunities available for alums (they also have a career services center). Certainly there is a heavy concentration of UNC alums in North Carolina -- you can tell from watching the basketball games -- but I do believe that many people move away from the state. I met a guy a couple weeks ago who became a vice president in the World Bank before quitting to start an e-bay type website for global philanthropy. </p></li>
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<p>I hope this somewhat calms any fears of yours or your parents. If you are a good student and work hard, you will be fine wherever you go to school. I also think that while these concerns are important, the most important factor to consider is where you will be happy for the next four years. And if you visit UNC, I think you will find a lot of happy people. In fact, the first thing I noticed when I came to visit was how many people you see on campus who are smiling. It's a great place to live and go to school! Thanks for the questions...and I really do need to get some work done tonight so I will call it quits for now, but if you have any more questions feel free to put them up.</p>

<p>Oh...and Carolina Scholars (and honors) notifications come out after the admit decisions I think (at least mine did)...so don't give up yet, and open any mail that UNC sends you! I made that mistake last year, and left my scholarship info lying on my floor for a couple of days and almost recycled it. I'm sure glad I didn't!</p>

<p>This is an interesting Wall Street Journal/classroom edition article I found online. It's dated March '05, but I'm not sure it's really that recent.. a comparison between an Ivy graduates and state university graduates (specifically UNC).
<a href="http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/archive/05mar/related_05mar_teacher_ivy.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.wsjclassroomedition.com/archive/05mar/related_05mar_teacher_ivy.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Try the Krueger Report by two Princeton economists. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.tuftsdaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/10/422feda0bc7cf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.tuftsdaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/03/10/422feda0bc7cf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>A paper released by National Bureau of Economic Research and authored by Alan B. Krueger, an economist at Princeton University, and Stacy Berg Dale, a researcher at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, examined the 1995 incomes of 14,239 adults who had entered 30 colleges in 1976.</p>

<p>According to the study, students who had enrolled in colleges where the average freshman SAT score was 1200 earned about $76,800. Higher earnings, however, went to students who were accepted by the highly selective colleges, but who had enrolled in institutions where the average SAT was 1000.</p>

<p>"The issue has been debated for 30 years in economic literature: how much of extra earnings we know people get are determined by a person's ability and by the college they attended?" Garman said.</p>

<p>"The higher ability you have, the easier it is to graduate from college," he said. "The high-ability people should learn more when they graduate from college."</p>

<p>As a result, "the returns to college are definitely higher for high-ability students," Garman said. "This provides the whole basis for sorting - the high-ability students who get higher returns will generally attend college. Students who have the lowest ability tend not to attend college."</p>

<p>Alrighty back again...I read the article and it sort of contradicts what I said before. Since they've done some quantitative analysis, they may know what they are talking about more than I do. </p>

<p>However, I don't believe that their argument really applies to the case of students trying to decide where to go to college. This survey looks at an average starting salary, but it doesn't explain how much of this difference is determined by the fact that Ivy League schools start with a higher average of talent and how much is value added by the school. A better measure would track individual students who started out with similar talent and then saw how their salaries differed. And this article explains that there is probably little difference in the long run for similarly-talented people, no matter where they went to school. So if you are going to do an economic calculation about college, there is no proof that the Ivy Leagues add any value to your employability. (I am a bit biased and maybe wishfully thinking, as I turned down a couple of ivies to come to Carolina.) All in all, I am quite dubious that I am really going to lose out by not spending $160,000 to go to Yale or Harvard.</p>

<p>I am very much looking forward to graduating debt free, and that I will likely use the money I saved in undergrad to put towards a top graduate/law/public policy program. Also, college is much much more than a means to the end of a high salary...this is four years of your life and you ought to make the most of them. When I visited Yale and Duke (I didn't visit Harvard) after I was accepted, I really didn't feel like either of them was the right place for me socially, and I felt a lot more comfortable at Carolina. I'm sure it's different for each individual student though.</p>

<p>Oh, and we have a better basketball team than any of the ivies (and Duke) :)</p>

<p>I was discussing the WSJ article above, not the Tufts Daily one, which I agree with. Sorry for the confusion. OK I'm done for tonight, I promise!</p>

<p>FYI- The Tufts Daily article doesn't do justice to the Krueger Report. What the study (not in response to you COtarheel) looked at was students who had the character traits for success and were accepted to top Ivy schools (Harvard, Yale, etc.) and those who were accepted, but turned down the Ivy League schools for whatever X reason. It turns out that there was no statistical difference (in future earnings) between those who chose to go a non-Ivy League (due to full rides or other incentives) and those who went to Ivys.</p>

<p>Yes- I remember reading an article (but not certain exactly where) that if you compare students who went to Ivy league with students accepted to Ivy league but who went to state schools, you find little or no difference in success or income earned after graduation.</p>

<p>Cotarheel: Yes, I agree with you. I'll go back and re-read the WSJ article..I thought the statements were pretty much in line with what you say here as well, no? But--yes--I also agree about the 'character traits for success' and 'similar talents' of students comparison. (We are also dubious about spending that $160,000...) And I'm always amused/confused by the acceptances of those $160,000 price tag schools that will tell a student he/she doesn't qualify for financial aid, and then the next packet that arrives in the mail is the one explaining how to apply for the loans he or she is obviously going to need. What am I missing here?
Anyway...again, COtarheel, your posts were great, and you confirmed much of our opinions about UNC, too. Thanks again.</p>

<p>I'd also like to thank COtarheel for taking your time writing those great posts.</p>

<p>So far my S got in UNC, UT Austin, Rice, and Wash St. Louis. Your posts make a compelling case for UNC and UT. He already got some nice deals from UT. Hopefully, he gets something from UNC as well.</p>

<p>Thanks again.</p>