DD has been admitted for electrical engineering. She is waiting to hear from other schools, but CPSLO is a solid possibility for her. She is interested in the honors program, which apparently was revamped a couple of years ago according to the web site.
We are intrigued by the “new” direction that seems to be striving to create a small community of very motivated students that pursue an honors curriculum of broader education, often applying the honors classes as their general education requirements. While DD would enter with most of these requirements already met with AP credit, she would enjoy this type of environment as a supplement to engineering. She is more of a renaissance woman than the typical SLO engineer and does not view the opportunity to eliminate most non-engineering requirements (through AP credit) as a plus.
The CPSLO honors program web site is out of date and references last year’s application dates. We are inquiring with them.
Does anyone have experience with the honors program?
My son was invited a few years ago, but passed. It didn’t replace GEs, but added. It would have made his curriculum 210 hours.
As for the “typical” SLO engineer, I’m not sure there is one. My son has taken literature, philosophy and history classes. His girlfriend has a minor in philosophy. The ME curriculum has 40 hours required that are non-technical, not in support of the major.
The new honors program, for incoming students as of fall 2017, seems to be a more typical university honors program where students can take honors sections of their various general education, major and distribution requirement classes as available. As they advance they have some seminar, research or other specialized honors opportunities. Usually students have to meet a minimum number of such classes and experiences to get a special designation upon graduation, but they can choose additional honors sections if they desire and a lot of schools give them some measure of registration priority.
It would be odd to find a school that did not count any honors program requirements toward the degree, but perhaps that is why CPSLO revamped their program. The “approved tracks” in the new program are very interdisciplinary: research, study abroad/international or community service/civic engagement.
Does anyone have experience with the current CPSLO honors program?
What would be great is if they added priority registration to the Honors Program list of benefits. Being able to register first and get preferred profs, times, etc. would be valuable.
The Honors site says some students are automatically invited but others may request to apply. Anyone know how that invite is initiated? Through the portal? To ask to apply it gives an email address, just wondering about the “Automatically invited group.”
Ok, so if our student is interested they should email the honors@calpoly.edu? And yes you are right. It says “automatically invited to submit an application.”
Since the website was not up to date, we emailed for information and got the above response. I’d think that DD would have been automatically “invited to apply” anyway based on her stats, but they responded that they would put her on the list for when applications open. Since everything at CPSLO seems to be so heavily impacted, expressing interest seems prudent. I noticed that there are honors sections for classes she would be looking for right away (like “technical writing for engineers”), and she would prefer those sections if she can get them.
To be clear, the honors program at SLO does not offer priority registration although the programs at many other colleges do. Also, the honors program portion of the website is now updated for 2019. Applications and decisions in April so that students can factor that in before committing to SLO on May 1.
@eyemgh I don’t see any reference to overall priority registration under the benefits of the program on the honors website, but some of the dates are updated to 2019 and some are not so there may still be revisions underway. Or, perhaps given how valuable registration priority would be at an impacted school, they just don’t broadcast that benefit.
It was overtly mentioned in the past. For what it’s worth, my son had two opportunities to get priority, one through honors, one through being a section tutor. He passed on both and still will have his BS and MS in 5 years.