<p>The honors program at Nebraska has it's own dorm (you have to be in the honors program to live there) which I think greatly helps the community feeling of the program. When there are actually dedicated honors sections for various classes, then the enrollment was capped at about 24 (maybe a little more, a little less). There were also dedicated advisors for honors program students - essentially a second or third advisor (Advisor for your major, advisor for you minor if you had one, pre-professional advisor if you were pre-med or the like, and honors advisor) from which you could go to for help. </p>
<p>I was only in the Honors program at Nebraska for a year however (I wasn't particularly worried about my grades and thus didn't keep the necessary 3.5), and I didn't live in the honors dorm (I was in a fraternity) so I wasn't particularly attached to the honors program there. In my experience the classes that were actually "honors" sections of concurrent courses (ie Bio 201H vs Bio 201), the honors sections were actually easier. Part of this was having the best profs teach the honors sections, and having them actually want to be there teaching. But it did have what LAC's advertise in the small classes where the prof knows your name. In the bio class I took honors, the class read Finding Darwin's God as kind of an outside project and we met outside of class a couple times to discuss it. The one problem I saw with the Nebraska Honors Program was that as one moved to the 300 and 400 level classes (classes typically reserved for major and thus smaller enrollments anyway) there were fewer and fewer dedicated honors sections (which makes sense b/c there are going to be fewer and fewer people with the necessary pre-reqs and interest to take a class in the History of Sociological Theory) which meant that if you wanted Honors Credit for a class you had to "contract" it out as Honors with the prof. This would be some sort of extra project that you developed with the professor. It acheived the same goal however again as LAC's in that the prof knew your name and you got "individual attention" b/c you had to often times get help from a prof.</p>
<p>I dont' know about other programs however outside my own.</p>
<p>The one thing I wil take contention to though is the idea that there is this huge difference in the quality of education between an Ivy and a State school, particulary schools that are Research I or on other lists that show a dedication of resources to students. Particularly in the sciences: organic chemistry is organic chemistry. I'm sure there are crappy professors who only want to do research at Princeton, just like there are at State U. I don't want to start a huge flame war or debate on the relative importance of prestige here because that has been discussed over and over before. The biggest difference between State U and an Ivy lies in the student body, and in their average level of intelligence and motivation. There are plenty of people at any given State U who could have gone to an Ivy but for whatever reason chose not to, and there are plenty of kids at a State U who could never have gotten accepted at an Ivy no matter how badly they might have wanted to.</p>