<p>What are the advantages of an Honors Program? Can you give some opinions based on your experience perhaps?</p>
<p>I assume you're talking about an honors college, not honors programs for a specific major like history ...</p>
<p>Honors colleges are often oversold, the glossy pamphlets giving the impression a small LAC has been set up inside a larger university. Honors colleges do offer some very valuable perks and let you meet some of the top students at your college. But when you're thinking of honors colleges the pitch is often that you're getting an elite private education at the public school price. Sadly, this isn't true.</p>
<p>Depending on the U's program, things may range from taking separate honors classes to taking just one honors seminar per semester. Honors college programs offer the small classes and top profs predominantly for the 1st two years of college, when for liberal arts majors its easier to craft a standard set of offerings that will meet the distribution requirements for almost any major. </p>
<p>It is rare to find more than a token amount of offerings upper-division since the honors program simply doesn't have enough staff to duplicate an entire major or set of majors. So the last two years most/all classes are taken with the rest of the students in the regular U's classes. The teaching of the profs will be geared towards that level, the discussions and student involvement in class will be dominated by the regular students, and so on. And class sizes may balloon, too, if your in a larger public U and a popular major. </p>
<p>Honors colleges do offer some valuable perks in addition to the classes. Typical ones include registering for classes before everyone else so you get the classes you want (a perk worth its weight in gold!), special counselors, guaranteed housing, special library privileges. They will stamp your diploma with some indication of honors college or make a note on your transcript. But I would be skeptical of attending a college for its honors program in place of a more highly regarded U.</p>
<p>I don't have any idea about honors colleges too. Do colleges choose top students and put them in their honors colleges upon accepting or is it one's choice or is it like you performance in your particular college?? Do colleges prepare them better then?</p>
<p>I got into a public college and after getting in, admitted students can apply for the "Honors Program" it seems. They have a separate application with essay to write and stuff for the program. I was considering about applying but kinda clueless what it entails. The website talk about special seminars, doing senior project, housing privileges ...</p>
<p>Usually you have to be a top student to be accepted in the honors college - usually an ACT/SAT and GPA cut off.</p>
<p>My daughter is in the honors college at her school. The advantages are mostly as stated above - she is a freshman but has priority enrollment so can enroll before the upper classmen. The honors classes are very small - 15 or 20 max compared to 150 in some of the regular classes. This gives her an opportunity to get to know those teachers better than she can get to know the teachers in the big classes. She has had some wonderful teachers in honors including one that has really inspired her and that she has become close to (something that would not have been possible in a class of 150) - has also had an awful one. We learned that just because someone is head of a department and teaching an honors class does not mean they will be a great teacher!! Mostly a positive experience though. She has a regular advisor and an honors advisor. There is honors housing - I would have liked her to go there as they have a lot of organized social activities so they get to know each other well. She opted for another dorm because she did not want a room mate. Now when she talks to friends in that dorm I think she thinks she should have done that - but she is going off campus next year.</p>
<p>At her school they have to take 6 hours of honors per semester the f/s years and 3 per semester the j/sen years. There is a lot of selection of classes for gen ed type classes - less for upper classes though they are trying to expand that.</p>
<p>Otherwise - they have a separate computer lab, extra library privileges and a few other things. - some different study abroad opportunities etc.</p>
<p>My daughter is glad she decided to do the honors college. Mostly for the opportunity for the small classes and the relationship with the teachers and the students in the class. She does about half honors and half regular classes and finds that is just right for her.</p>
<p>I'm in the Honors program at my school (a state public) and it's very good.</p>
<p>There are honors sections or honors classes for most courses that are open to us. Honors students get priority registration for classes, the opportunity for awesome honors-only housing, and extended library privileges. There are also plenty of extra scholarship opportunities, research opportunities, internships, and the like. To graduate as an Honors student, each honors student has to do a senior research thesis and present it.</p>
<p>Some honors classes are definitely worth the "honors" designation (ie, they're much more challenging), others are not so hard (eg, the only difference between honors Genetics and regular Genetics last semester was that honors had to do a short paper to hand in at the end of the semester).</p>