<p>It is decision time and my son is steering away from the LAH program for a couple of reasons. The most significant of these is the sheer size of UT. I would like to know if there is a sense of community in the LAH program or if students just see each other occassionally but are mostly going off in different directions. I would also like to know if students have opportunities for close communication with professors so that there are profs that know them well and can write recs for them at the end of 4 years. Are many of classes large lectures? How difficult it is for students in LAH be involved with research and internships? I would also like to know how you find the quality of experience of being in LAH differs from being a student who is not in an honors program. Presently my son's first cholce is Claremont Mckenna College which has a totally different feeling from UT but is also much more expensive and a lot further away.</p>
<p>Other people can tell you about LAH, but I can tell you that the size of UT didn’t bother me at all. It’s not as if you see 50,000 people every time you walk out of your dorm! You’re in one building at a time, with not that many folks. I was in engineering honors, and found great kids to mingle with. As an upperclassmen, I had a core group of Architectural Engineering friends which I did almost everything with. The ADVANTAGE to the size is that there are SO many opportunities for fun, research, friends, churches, social groups, etc., etc. And football games are indescribable! I’m hoping my kids go to UT!</p>
<p>Good luck to your son in his decision!</p>
<p>LAH puts first-year students in small classes, or occasionally in small discussion sections of larger classes (say in Intro to Western Music). LAH makes it easy to register for classes because there is generally space left in honors sections of classes. </p>
<p>LAH students will get to know LAH professor/advisors Stacey Amorous and director Larry Carter well. LAH students will get to know a number of their lower level class professors well because the classes are smaller and the students are engaged. </p>
<p>LAH is mostly something for freshmen and sophomores; as students advance into upper division courses they become departmental honors students within their majors, so I don’t think LAH is particularly a vehicle for internships. (Graduate with honors in the College of Liberal Arts by taking three intensive upper division LAH courses - enrollment in these courses is limited to LAH students who have earned a cumulative UT GPA of 3.5 and have completed of 60 credit hours.)</p>
<p>LAH has a theater group and a student council and ? a musical ensemble ?, and they will have some social activities. Fall semester of freshman year, there will be a late Monday afternoon seminar. The students will be with a subgroup of LAH kids when they take their one required 3-credit LAH course and they will run across each other in the honors sections of classes, but the students are not nearly as close knit with each other as, say, the Dean’s Scholars students. </p>
<p>The LAH advising at summer orientation and the family orientation for LAH parents at summer orientation were both very, very nice, so it can give someone who knows few people at UT a subset of friends to start out at UT with, if that helps. (Figure there are about 130 LAH kids and 6 summer orientation sessions, so freshmen will meet about 20-25 LAH kids at orientation.)</p>
<p>Being in LAH at UT will be very different experience compared to being at a liberal arts college like CMC with 1200 undergrads. You will be part of UT - with its variety of majors and academic enrichment opportunities, its football team, and all of the hundreds of activities available. It really depends on the kid and what he is looking for. (I think UT is great.)</p>
<p>181818, my son is facing a similar decision. His top choices are Plan II Honors at UT or a small LAC. The size of UT makes my hair stand up on end, but today he is leaning toward UT (check back in 2 hours, though). He likes the honors dorms (same as LAH) and the students and profs he has already met. And he really loves Austin. </p>
<p>That said, he is visiting the LAC again next week and they have offered financial aid that makes it very appealing to my pocketbook. I guess I’m not offering much help here, but I totally understand the situation.</p>
<p>I guess I don’t understand. Why does the large size bother you so much? He will be in small classes for the most part, right? I just had NO difficulties related to size, and there were almost exactly the same number of students when I was at UT as now. There are just so many cool opportunities at a large school! I found the professors in even my large classes to be very accessible and glad to talk to me as often as I wanted. And there were faculty members there known all over the world. More than once, I was in the elevator in the physics with Steven Weinberg, a Nobel Prize winner in physics. My colleagues in the northeast can’t believe some of the engineers I got to take classes from (the Civil Engineering Department alone has 20 faculty members who have been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering).</p>
<p>My son and I visited 5 small schools over February break. To be honest, those made MY hair stand up on end. “What, pay $50,000 a year for a library the size of the one at my high school??” Eek. Even my son looked at me more than once and said, “This school costs how much??” </p>
<p>OK, off my soapbox! :-)</p>
<p>To be clear it isn’t me who the large size is bothering. It is my son, I don’t know if he is sure that he will not be in large classes for the mostpart. If that is true it is good news. I think it probably boils down to him being the type of person who is more comfortable with a small group than with a crowd and he has some worries about finding his group when being in the midst of so many people. He also has some concerns about getting to know his profs and them knowing him. Actually I would love it for him to love UT. I hope you can tell me more that might set him more at ease and make him want to take another look. We don’t have much time to decide. By the way he expects to be a philosophy or psych major and eventually hopes to go to law school.</p>
<p>Oh, I see. I think I was responding more to eggmom’s statements.</p>
<p>Hmm, I don’t know if I can help much, but I’ll try! I guess the way I looked at it, UT is like a larger city with LOTS of small neighborhoods. Each neighborhood has its own personality and cool stuff to offer. Kind of like Boston, if you’ve been there. Even though I grew up in Austin, I didn’t know a SOUL in my dorm when I started UT, and never kept in touch with anybody there from my high school. But the second day I was there, I met the girl I ended up rooming with for three years. During the first week of class, another girl in my (big) honors calculus class recognized me, followed me back to our dorm, and introduced herself. We remained close friends after that, and I flew down to go down to her wedding a few years ago.</p>
<p>In engineering, I rarely mingled with kids from other departments. I was mostly in the civil engineering building. There were lots of groups to join, such as the Society of Women Engineers (I may not have that name quite right!) and the student group for architectural engineers (it’s changed its name, so I don’t know what it is now!). The ArchEs were a TIGHT bunch. We studied together, partied together, and graduated together.</p>
<p>I did research with professors who have since been inducted into the National Academy of Engineering. Some of my professors helped develop building codes for concrete, steel, and seismic design. If I tell structural engineering friends that I know Joe Yura (steel bracing expert), they don’t believe me.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if I wanted to branch out and do cool stuff, I could. I took fencing, racquetball, astronomy, and flying groundschool. I got a great discount for taking flying lessons at the airport. Even though I wasn’t a science major, I got to use this HUGE telescope on the top of the physics building and took some amazing photos for a class project. My future husband and I took swing dancing and massage lessons at the student union. We went to parties all over Texas! We went to Shakespeare festivals and got to know some of the actors and the director. We attended master piano classes taught by nationally-known musicians.</p>
<p>On the weekends, we ate at the Oasis, swam in Barton Springs, danced on 6th Street, flew kites in Zilker Park, drank wine at Mount Bonnell (drinking age was 18, lol), attended productions put on by touring Broadway companies, went to Shakespeare playreadings with Gareth Morgan (a fascinating Classics professor), attended a solid church, etc., etc. </p>
<p>Were there any downsides? The only one I can think of was my freshman chemistry class. I’d had a great teacher in HS, but it wasn’t AP, so I didn’t place out. The UT class put me to sleep, it was so boring. On the other hand, probably THE biggest class was US history with Dr. Forgie. If you look him up on Pick-A-Prof, you’ll see what great reviews he gets. He’s a natural story teller and assigns you a bunch of neat books you’ll never forget (e.g., Path Between the Seas, by David McCullough). He always took the time to talk with me, and even tried to convince me to switch from majoring in engineering to history!</p>
<p>Then of course, there are the football games. I LOVED waking up on home football game Saturdays. You could just feel the anticipation in the air. I would walk across campus towards the stadium, enjoying seeing so many other people wearing burnt orange! Seeing 75,000 people cheering on the Longhorns is hard to describe. Going to Dallas every year for the OU game and State Fair stands out as one of my favorite memories. Do the kids still walk down the streets at night yelling, “OU sucks?” and hearing the OU students shout back insults in return? It was so much fun.</p>
<p>I could really write a book about my six years at Texas. I got my BS and MS there. I probably would have gone on for my PhD there, but I have a mortal fear of oral exams! I am actually feeling quite jealous that my 16-year-old son may go there and run on the track team. I’m glad my parents still live in Austin so I will have an excuse to visit often!</p>
<p>If you have any specific questions, I would be happy to answer them. My dad is still a professor at Texas, so if you have any “hard” questions, I could ask him for a contact name.</p>
<p>MaineLonghorn, what an amazing post…</p>
<p>I agree. And I don’t understand all the worries about going to a large university such as UT. Large universities definitely offer more of everything, which is a good thing to me.</p>
<p>I would have to say from experience that the Plan II Honors Program gives a greater sense of an intimate community than LAH.</p>
<p>Dean’s Scholars is more intimate than LAH, too.</p>
<p>Okay, from what I am gathering from the last 2 posts is that my son is not likely to find that sense of community that he is looking for in LAH, although there are lots of other great aspects to UT. Is this correct from your perspective? He is also considering Barrett Honors and Claremont Mckenna, I’m wondering if those might be better choices for him since I think this sense of community is really something that he is seeking. I would love for him to pick UT but in the end I want him to be happy with his choice.</p>
<p>I’ll be in LAH, so he can be friends with me! 
If he wants a sense of community, he should try joining a Freshman Interest Group. I hear those are good for getting fishies involved. </p>
<p>Good luck! I hope to see your son at UT next year! hook em!</p>
<p>Thanks aschap91, what a sweet reply! A FIG is a good idea although he plans to live in the honors dorm if he goes to UT, I don’t know if that matters. We’ll be visiting UT this week to try and come up with the final answer. Good Luck to you, we know LAH is a great program we are just not sure about the fit.</p>
<p>If you are in LAH, you can be in a FIG if you want to.<br>
Check last year’s FIG list. This year’s will probably be similar.
See if there are any that are particularly appealing to you.
<a href=“http://www.utexas.edu/ugs/sites/default/files/fig/docs/2008_fig_brochure.pdf[/url]”>http://www.utexas.edu/ugs/sites/default/files/fig/docs/2008_fig_brochure.pdf</a></p>
<p>Thanks for the link. He will try and get more info about the figs tomorrow when we visit UT.</p>
<p>We visited today and my son was told that LAH is already like a FIG and that a student would not do both LAH and a FIG. MY son did however get a better feeling about the sense of community in LAH than he previously had. Still no decision though.</p>
<p>Honestly, you really have to TRY to not have friends at Texas.</p>
<p>There are social groups for anyone. You can meet people in class, in the LAH/Plan II/where ever office, on your floor, in the dining hall, in a study lounge, at a club meeting, at a party, at a football game, and so on.</p>
<p>There are a lot of clubs, so you can join one that suits your interest. Many people have intimate bonds within these clubs and deep devotion to them.</p>
<p>Even with a 50,000 person campus, it’s rare that I don’t run into someone I know, or at least someone I recognize, on the walk between my room and my classes, which is no more than a quarter mile. It feels a lot smaller and a lot more intimate than it would seem.</p>
<p>LAH is a very great program, particularly for kids who have an idea what subject they want to study but still want advanced-level and critical thinking in their core classes. I am not an LAHer, but I would highly recommend it, and the program staff is second to none at UT, even compared to Plan II (although I am biased as the LAH staff administers my scholarship money). I do think your son could find that sense of community he’s looking for in LAH or anywhere else on campus.</p>
<p>Oh, and MaineLonghorn, it hasn’t change at all (except the drinking age is 21, lol). Kids still stagger around Dallas screaming good-natured insults at one another during OU weekend–only now the game is almost always of national significance, which it wasn’t during many of the last 30 years. The football atmosphere at home is still electric, except that DKR now seats 98,000 fans, so it’s even louder and rowdier.</p>
<p>Loneranger: Based on many of the posts of yours that I have read on CC it doesn’t surprise me for one minute that even in your freshman year you can already usually run into someone you know most places you go on UT’s huge campus. However for the kid who is less gregarious and is not in a more tightly knit honors program like Plan 2, and is looking for a strong academic community and who really likes classes that follow a discussion format do you think it still works? I’m not saying that my son is introverted it is just that he is more of an small circle rather than a large crowd kind of person. I definitely expect that he will get involved with some clubs at UT if he goes there. All of his life his best friends have been few but always strong academically. This isn’t because he seeks this out, it is just that these are the people he is most comfortable with. Although he will definitely find this group at LAH it seems that since there are so few required classes the opportunities to get to know other students in the program seems less. He does plan to live in the honors dorm if he goes to UT so I expect that will help. The question is can a person like him love going to UT LAH? If he doesn’t love it, is it likely that this type of person will be happy there? For lots of reasons I would love for him to be in Texas, but at the same time his happiness and an environment that supports his growth are more important. At the moment with just days to go until a decision must be made UT is my first choice but not his.</p>
<p>Let’s see what loneranger says, and it might also be good for your son to talk to someone who is in LAH. </p>
<p>I have two suggestions for your son that can help make LAH more cozy when starting off at UT in the fall. During his first semester, he has to take the LAH 102 Monday afternoon seminar. There he will be with all 130 or so of the LAH students. That is fun but not intimate.</p>
<p>Suggestion 1. There will be a lot of options for his (small by design) freshman signature course. Some of these are open to everyone and some are open only to honors students. He should take one of the classes/sections that is only open to honors students. (There are a lot of choices.) This way he will meet and spend a lot of time with LAH people. At summer orientation, the LAH office will have a list of these classes. </p>
<p>Suggestion 2. Everyone in LAH is required to take one LAH special class. Again, these are small by design. My recollection is that there is a choice but that most people take LAH 305 History at Play. History at Play is offered fall and spring. He should take it in the fall.This way he will meet and spend a lot of time with LAH people at the start of the year.</p>
<p>If it works out in his schedule that he can register for an honors section of a history class or a government class or a class that meets one of his distribution credits, he should definitely do that. I think most of the LAH kids do. This helps them get classes at good times of day rather than the early morning or late afternoon classes. My daughter took Intro to Western Music as a general culture elective first semester freshman year. She signed up for it as an honors class. This is a class with one larger group and then smaller discussion sections. Her discussion section only had about 10 students in it, all LAH students (some first year students, some second year students). She liked this class a lot, and made friends with these kids.</p>