<p>I'm wondering what sort of credentials you have to have to get in to the Commonwealth program. Also, what is the feel of the honors college? Is it mostly separate from the rest of the university, or is it integrated? (I'm applying to mostly LACs, and the size of UMass kind of freaks me out). Thanks for your input.</p>
<p>To get into it straight from High School, a person must have a 3.8 GPA (Unadjusted), 1300 combined math and Verbal SAT score, and be ranked top ten percent in the class. If you don't have that out of high school, you can transfer in once you accumulate 3.2 GPA at given semester.</p>
<p>Neat, I've got that. Any comments as to the atmosphere of the honors college? Class size, professors, involvement with the larger community?</p>
<p>I'm starting my freshmen year, so I don't know a whole lot, but from what I know class sizes are about 25-30 people. You take about 2 Honors courses a semester, and for Freshmen year, you can live in cluster with other ComCol students. (Optional) From what I know your not isolated from the general public as you are not expected to load up you whole semesters worth of courses with honors classes. </p>
<p>This article here is a good read on the ComCol program.
Cream</a> at the top is sweet for UMass - The Boston Globe</p>
<p>Actually, you only need to take 1 honors course a semester to fulfill the minimum requirements. And that smaller class size is very, very nice.</p>
<p>As for involvement with the larger community, you can join IMPACT, which is community service learning as well. I'm not involved with IMPACT, so I'm not sure if you can take it outside the honors college as well. I'm guessing you can.</p>