<p>Entering with enough credits to satisfy the majority of the Areas of Knowledge requirements, of course.</p>
<p>I intend to go on to a graduate course of study. I have heard that departmental honors, conducted within a specific department, is more prestigious and more worthwhile than general honors.</p>
<p>I have also heard that general honors should be avoided on account of extraneous work given that I have many of my Areas of Knowledge graduation requirements already satisfied.</p>
<p>Can anyone corroborate these claims? I am curious as to whether UW Honors would be a wise decision or not, especially given that I plan on pursuing a double major course of study and therefore my quarterly courseload and overall workload will have to be balanced especially well.</p>
<p>Thank you for your opinions on the matter. I appreciate all thoughts you may have to offer.</p>
<p>In departmental honors, I believe you need to write a paper, conduct research, etc. With core/college honors, you just take a bunch of classes the Honors Program designates as core classes.</p>
<p>If you enter UW with almost all your Areas of Knowledge completed… Honors doesn’t let you use those credits to fulfill their core requirements. Basically, you will be going into UW with a ton of credits (which don’t do anything unless they apply towards your major) and you have to RETAKE Areas of Knowledge as Honors sees fit. Unless you have a good graduation plan laid out, the University will try to graduate you ASAP so you don’t ‘take up another spot.’</p>
<p>I’m a freshman now, and I got into Core Honors with a handful of credits for Areas of Knowledge. To be honest, I’m staying in Honors to fulfill the rest of my credits for Areas of Knowledge (ie. VLPA) with some interesting classes but intend to ‘trail off’ and just let them kick me out because I’m not taking enough Honors courses to graduate on time with Honors. I’ll be applying for departmental honors.</p>
<p>I can corroborate these claims as well. I didn’t have much AP credit, but I did have a ton of Running Start credit, and it just wasn’t worth it to pursue a College Honors path, considering that I intend to do a double-major. Departmental Honors is good enough; I don’t know how prestigious it is in comparison, but I do think it’s more worthwhile. The only people who should consider College Honors are people who are smart and/or have a lot of drive, but for whatever reason aren’t coming into UW with any appreciable amount of credits.</p>
<p>Hm… doesn’t sound like the core would be worth it for you if you care a lot about graduating in four years. You can take Honors science classes without being in the honors program. The honors humanities classes can be really interesting and worthwhile too though, so if you want the opportunity to take them you should apply for college honors. Also, departmental and college honors are not mutually exclusive programs (just wanted to clarify). If you don’t mind writing the essays, worst case scenario you can always just fail to complete the program if you get in (as speedsolver mentioned- I know a fair number of people taking this route so they don’t have to complete the requirements but can still take any of the classes if they want).</p>
<p>Sorry for bringing back an old thread, but what would you define as an appreciable amount credits; I will have 40+ AP credits (the + depends on if i pass the Spanish Exam or not). Also, since I did not apply for honors during the freshman application session and hear that the honors program is best for studying abroad. How is the process of transferring over to honors for an already admitted student?</p>