If accepted into Honors at Indiana University or at The University of Iowa, is it worth the extra time, effort, and work. How much more is involved?
Each school will run their honors program their own way with their own requirements. Dd 's honors program came with perks. Early class registration, bumping rights, facility level check out privileges at the library, 24 hour access to the private honors lounge and 24 hour access to the computer lab. She was happy not to have to sit though gen eds. The two additional classes each semester put her on overload every semester. Since then the university no longer charges honor students for overload. The final two years of honors included a two year research project, paper and presentation. They were expected to have at least a 3.5 every semester but could be flexible if they fell below and were bringing it up. They were also expected to be active on campus and hold a leadership position. All these things taught a variety of skills that can be useful in finding employment. Good time management skills were essential in surviving their honors program.
OP - You may want to post this question in the forums for these two schools. As the above poster mentioned, each school runs its honors program differently.
My daughter’s program requires an honors seminar class each semester freshman year, a scholarly research project, and then a certain number of honors credits to graduate but they are pretty easy to obtain. The perks for her far outweigh the extra work which she actually loves.
My suggestion is to at least start in the honors program. Nobody will make you complete it.
So see if the perks are worth it and take whatever freshman honors classes you need to.
I agree with bopper, but also agree that you should check with the school specific forums as well. I think many of the typical advantages of honors programs - activities, special dorms, freshmen seminars are especially useful for getting to know more studious students. Sometimes it’s hard to judge what’s actually good and bad about a program until you are immersed in it. I know my younger son, despite doing a lot of research ahead of time, did not really realize some of the real annoyances about the way his major was organized until he was there.