What is the honors program like at Indiana and is it worth the extra time and effort?
Are you referring to the Business Honors Program or Hutton Honors College?
Both of them. Not sure on the difference so any information would be helpful. Planning to study accounting.
The Business Honors Program is an application-based program that admits high-achieving students. The main benefit of this program is being able to enroll in Honors I-Core. If you aren’t familiar with I-Core, it’s a 4-class curriculum you’ll take during your junior year. The curriculum is centered around a big case that you’ll have to complete with a team. In terms of content, the differences between Normal I-Core and Honors I-Core aren’t huge. However, in Normal I-Core you won’t meet your team until towards the end of the semester, whereas in Honors I-Core you meet and work with your team at the start of the program. Additionally, the Honors I-Core grade distribution is generally better. Other benefits of the Business Honors Program include being around other high-achieving individuals, being invited to exclusive events, having a senior mentor to provide guidance/advice, etc… There are two ways to get into this program.
1.) Go through the standard admission process (Minimum 3.7 GPA requirement, group interview, letters of
recommendation from your C104/C106 and K201/K204 professors, letter of recommendation from a non-faculty
member, and a short essay response)
2.) Get accepted into the ACE Program (Fast-track program for high-achieving high school seniors)
Hutton Honors College is another honors program that admits highly-motivated, high-achieving students. The program enables students to enroll in various honors courses. Honors courses typically have higher grade distributions than normal courses. Naturally, one could conclude that honors students generally perform better than average students, so the higher grade distribution is not a surprise. However, some would contend that the higher grade distribution is also affected, in part, by more lenient grading/expectations, which may or may not be true. Also, honors courses typically have smaller class sizes than normal courses. Since you plan on studying accounting, I will use BUS-A201: Financial Accounting as an example. Normally, one A201 section has around 200+ students. On the other hand, A205, the honors version of A201, has a class size around 30-40. Some students prefer smaller class sizes because the learning environment may be less distracting and asking the professor for help is easier.
That is helpful thank you. It sounds like a student can be Honors overall and/or in the college of business. Thanks for the details.