<p>I was accepted into ASU engineering as well as Barrett. I am wondering what the workload will be like. I assume an engineering course load will be a lot, but how much additional work will be the Barrett requirements? My concern is if I will be able to handle it all. I am doing great in high school but assume college level courses will be much harder and time consuming.</p>
<p>How do Barrett students handle a heavy course load plus fulfill the Barrett requirements?
Are the Barrett courses and thesis really a lot?</p>
<p>I am debating if I should just stick to engineering in ASU and not do the Barrett honors. I feel like I do not have enough info on what Barrett will really involve and if it is worth the extra effort. At the end, will it really make a big difference if my degree is from ASU vs. Barrett? </p>
<p>What appeals to me about Barrett is the smaller environment. But would I be taking engineering classes with only Barrett students or would it be with non-Barrett students as well. I guess I am confused how this whole Barrett thing works.</p>
<p>My D has also been accepted to Ira Fulton and Barrett and we have some of the same questions. I don’t have answers for you as far as the additional workload being an engineer in Barrett, but I do know something about how the honors classes work. Almost all of your engineering classes would be with all other ASU engineering students. A few required classes have an Honors alternative (English 102, Biology, Calculus, Physics) and some may have a regular lecture with an honors-only section. You can also get honors credit for a regular class by doing an honors contract with the professor for additional work. You need a total of 36 honors credits including the freshman seminar and a thesis, which together account for 12 of those hours.</p>
<p>You can see which Honors classes and sections have been offered in the past at</p>
<p>If you search “arizona state class schedule” you get a page that allows you to show the current and previous semester classes by options you select. At the bottom of the selection menu is an “Honors” option.</p>
<p>My son graduated this past May from ASU with an engineering degree and from Barrett. For him, Barrett was a great thing. I don’t think it added to his workload appreciably but it made a huge difference socially. Living in Barrett the first year was a great opportunity to meet students who were bright, motivated, and interested in a wide variety of things. I think high school was kind of hard for him because he never quite fit in but he fit right in at Barrett.</p>
<p>You can do honors contracts in many classes and the students very quickly learn which professors make very easy contracts and which add so much additional work that you might as well take another class. Most of your classes (and I think all the engineering classes) will be non-Barrett but you can do honors contracts in many of them. My son was able to use the FURI project (Fulton Undergraduate Research) he was working on as the basis for his honors thesis so it wasn’t a lot of additional work.</p>
<p>YMMV, but for my son it was a great decision to be a part of Barrett at ASU.</p>
<p>My D is also a prospective Barrett student so I’ve been spending time poking around on ASU website. Thanks for the list of classes, STEMfamily. The list doesn’t tell the best thing about the honors classes. They are generally all small sections. So instead of 100 kids in diffeq, or 200 in physics 132, you have about 25 students, huge difference in the feel of a course. You can see this when you search online course catalog. If the course listing has a green triangle at the right side, it is reserved for particular students, click on it to see which students. If the course is full, the triangle disappears, but still if you scroll down a list of sections of a high enrollment class and get to the bottom to find one section with a small class size and click on it, you see it is typically reserved for honors students. Our Barrett tour guide explained that to me. Since D is not a current student, all I know is hearsay, but I understand the college provides a wonderful community feel. You can live in the engineering section of Cereus and attend tutor sessions just down the hall from your room. Everyone will be in the same classes, supporting each other. They have a special writing center to help kids with the writing for ‘Human Event’ class and even can direct the tutoring to help with the specific teacher’s preferences. They have their own small gym if you don’t feel like leaving the building to work out. The rooms are new and spacious. Barrett kids are kind of catered to by the professors and others who work at ASU. If you have a campus job and they find out you are Barrett, you might get a raise when they know. Getting research assignments is easier. They give a lot of assistance applying for extra scholarships and arranging study abroad and fitting in classes if you add a major or minor. Some of the professors have offices right in the honors college and there are classrooms there also so you might get lucky and only have to walk down the hall to get to your 8 am class. It sounds worth it</p>
<p>Also, Barrett students can take honors freshman composition. All fr. comp. sections are small, but in honors comp. you will be in a class full of engaged students who contribute to discussion, much more enjoyable.Their signature ‘human event’ class is a humanities class, still required to take fr. comp. The choice is 2 semesters 101/102 or cramming it into one semester of 105. If you’ve 4or5 in AP Eng., you get to skip 101, but still have to take 102 even if you had both AP Eng. classes. They run 4 sections of honors 102 each semester, full of the AP English kids.</p>
<p>Check out the new edition of NMSC annual report just released. <a href=“http://nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf[/url]”>http://nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf</a> On pg 29 they profile a student who came to Barrett on NMF scholarship in 2008.He talks about how much he enjoyed his years there majoring in physics and how they helped him with study abroad(China), scholarships(Goldwater) and summer internships(National Lab, MIT) Currently he is a grad student in engineering at MIT.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info celeste. That was my understanding of the AP credit for the English classes also. D is doing her overnight visit to Barrett next week. Since it is so easy to get from the airport to the campus, she is doing this one by herself so I don’t get to ask questions :(</p>