<p>Can anyone give me pros/cons of the LSU honors college? </p>
<p>My son applied for the Engineering dorm, but was just accepted into the honors college. He plans to major in Chem Engr with plans for med school (who knows if that will happen). Would the honors dorms be better?</p>
<p>I will do some research tonight, but thougth I'd ask here for first-hand experience.</p>
<p>The biggest pro of the honors college is priority scheduling. For that reason alone, it almost makes it worth it. You schedule at the same time as graduating seniors do. Since I’ve been a freshman, I’ve gotten into every class I wanted and at the time I wanted. E.g. no settling for 7:30 morning classes.</p>
<p>The biggest con possibly would be that aren’t any honors course specifically catered to engineering majors. As a ChemE major, he’ll be able to do Gen. Chem, Organic Chem, Cal II for Honors credit. Other than that the majority of honors classes are humanities courses (lit course, philosophy, etc.) To get an idea, here’s the course list for the upcoming spring 2010 semester of honors courses: <a href=“http://www.honors.lsu.edu/Honors%20Courses%20Spring%202010%20-%2010-16-2009.pdf[/url]”>LSU's Roger Hadfield Ogden Honors College;
<p>I’ve like the Honors course that I’ve been due mostly to smaller class sizes and taking classes with topics I’m interested in.</p>
<p>As far as living situation, I would guess that there would be more pre-med students living in the honors dorm than in the engineering dorm. However, the engineering dorm is very nice and new. i’m not sure if they make you live in the honors dom just because you are an honors student.</p>
<p>As far as medical school goes, the honors college isn’t going to help you get in anywhere unless you do a thesis to graduate with honors, and even then your GPA and MCAT scores hold more weight. I would also press the importance of maintaining a high GPA. In my opinion, engineering is one of the tougher degrees and one in which many students settle for Bs or Cs since most do not plan on going to professional or graduate schools. Average GPA of LSU freshmen engineering students is around a 2.6-2.9, whereas the average GPA of students who matriculate into medical schools is 3.6-3.7. It can be done, though, I know of several people who went the engineering route into medical school.</p>
<p>“Average GPA of LSU freshmen engineering students is around a 2.6-2.9”</p>
<p>Yikes… WAY back when I was a freshman my grades were a lot better than that and my parents STILL thought they weren’t high enough :-).</p>
<p>Thanks a lot! Your reply was very helpful. I will forward that pdf link to my son.</p>
<p>No problem. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that the course list isn’t all inclusive of every Honors Course. I couldn’t find the course list for the Fall Semester. I.e. the spring course list only lists Honors Organic II as an option, but in reality there’s also a Honors Organic I, just only offered during the fall. I’m sure there are other courses that are like that, I just don’t know which ones. Also the HNRS 2013 and HNRS 2021 topics typically change every semester.</p>
<p>Another thing I forgot to mention is that while these are the Honors courses offered, you can choose to do upper division courses for honors credit via Honors Option. Usually this entails just writing an extra paper, project, or sometimes do graduate level work in addition to the normal course.</p>
<p>I am a current freshman in the honors dorm who went through a similar dilemma. I had to choose between the business residential college and the honors dorm. The business and engineering dorms are so close together they are practically connected, and both were built to be exact replicas of each other.</p>
<p>While not as new, the honors dorm is in a very good location on campus. I have a friend in the engineering dorm who prefers to hang out in honors. He told me most of the engineering students never leave their rooms and there isn’t much of anything going on over there.</p>