<p>You should get guaranteed housing if you apply early enough. I know that LSU has been filling up lately, but they usually do well to put Honors College kids in the honors housing first then use what's left over for non-honors kids. There's always a chance that if you apply absurdly late in the process that you will not get housing. Honestly, as far as housing goes, if you are looking for a nice place for him to live the new Engineering/Business Residential college (Graham) is the newest and nicest residential halls on campus. Though, I never lived there so I don't know how their community is. </p>
<p>My freshman year, I lived in the Honors housing (East Laville). The rooms are pretty big, imo, but they are outdated (which is why West Laville is currently undergoing renovations). They do look like they are from the 60s or so. It has hall baths (as opposed to graham's suite baths). While I never considered the Honors housing bad, it's definitely not the nicest the campus has to offer. However, I will say that I didn't regret living there. Usually the community council and the RA's there put on great programs and the lobby is usually full of kids. So there's plenty of people to meet in the halls. I think I've only been to Acadian once, so I can't really comment on what it's like. </p>
<p>Yup, the honors college kids get early scheduling. I've enjoyed it the entire I've been here. I've gotten into all the classes that I've wanted. Most people will "drop" out of the honors college when they get to their junior/senior year, because you get almost the same scheduling time and since you take upper division classes there's not as much competition for most of those classes. Of course they do that if they don't plan on graduating with honors and such.</p>
<p>As far as engineering and honors college, there's really not a particular perk. There aren't any specific engineering courses that are designated as honors-only courses. The honors college will offer some of the basic departmental courses as honors course, such as, the first two Chemistry courses have honors-only courses. The advantages are smaller classes (i.e. 50 people instead of 300 in the general "everybody" courses). And if you live in the honors housing, you'll meet a lot people who will also have the same class as you.</p>
<p>However, the advantages of honors courses are not tied to any particular major. The honors college will tend to offer unique "special-topic" humanities courses that you can take for general education requirements or for fun as opposed to other larger run-of-the-mill general education classes. These topics will vary from semester to semester. Such as I took "Literature of Modern Warfare", which covered literature based around various military engagements as opposed to taking a regular english class that would have focused on more famous and traditional novels. I also took "Modern Moral Philosophy" as opposed to a general philosophy class on ethics. These classes are small, usually having no more than 15 people in them. The two times I've taken these type of classes, we all sit around a big table, the professor lectures and then we have class discussions. Quite fun if you like that sort of thing. </p>
<p>You can check out the Fall 2009 Honors course offering here: <a href="http://www.honors.lsu.edu/HonorsCoursesFall2009.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.honors.lsu.edu/HonorsCoursesFall2009.pdf</a></p>
<p>When you start taking courses that are more non-general education or are specific for your major, there will usually not be an honors-alternative to it. However, the honors college does do what's called "honors option". This means that whatever class you are interested in performing the honors option for, you will meet with the professor of that course and discuss additional work to be performed in addition to taking the regular class. I did this last semester with two of my upper division biology classes. For both, I needed to write a 8-page paper on a topic that related to the course I was taking and it needed to be turned in by a certain date. While this isn't exactly fun, it does give you the opportunity to learn something more about a topic you are interested in. It's usually at this point that people start dropping out of the Honors college.</p>
<p>I, too, also came from a small Catholic high school in north LA (class size was 67 and that was the biggest). I would say that the Honors courses (specifically the ones I mentioned that had class sizes of 15) are nice and more personal. But I've also taken large gen-ed courses that had classes sizes ranging from 150 to 300 kids. I've never felt like a class was too big. In reality, it's usually only your gen-ed classes that are big. Though I can't speak for engineering courses, my upper-level biology classes usually range from 40-80 people in them, which I feel is a pretty decent class size (not too big and not too small). As far as LSU as a whole, I think the bigness of LSU is something you get used to. For me, it was amazing to be in a classroom that had more people in it than my entire high school had enrolled. But the big-ness of LSU provided many other benefits. Going to a large school means you'll have more student organizations, a more active campus, and lots of different people to meet. </p>
<p>When I applied for college (I was originally interested in engineering), I applied to these four schools and was accepted: (ordered from first choice to what I considered at the time last choice)
University of Southern California
Virginia Tech
Louisiana Tech
LSU</p>
<p>I ended choosing an instate school due to financial reasons. I had LSU as a last choice school because all I really knew about LSU was that it was football school and it was huge. At the time, I wasn't interested in the athletics side of college life. </p>
<p>When it came down to a choice between LSU and La tech, I chose LSU on the basis that I knew I would not enjoy living in Ruston (I live about 45 mins from Ruston). I had been there several times for various school functions and while it wasn't bad, it just wasn't great. I thought that maybe LSU could provide a better college experience. I haven't regretted the choice at all. I've loved LSU the entire time I've been here. And though, I didn't think I would like the athletics side of football (I didn't even buy season tickets my freshman year), I did end up buying a couple tickets during my freshman year and was amazed how much fun LSU football games really are when you are in the student section with a bunch of friends. There's no experience like it, imo.</p>
<p>For what's it's worth though, I have numerous friends who chose to go to LA Tech and they've loved the time they've been there and I have had at least two friends who didn't like LSU and transferred back to either LA tech or ULM. </p>
<p>I can't comment on how the weekends are like tech, but at LSU they can vary. During football season, the campus is packed on gamedays, and on away games the campus can become a mini-ghost town. I think that's just because people go for weeks without leaving campus because of the football games and then once the first available away game comes everybody takes the opportunity to go home before the next few weekends of home games. During the spring semester it's not as bad, but a significant portion of people do leave campus on the weekend. My time here, I've always had friends who stayed around, so it was never a problem. But I never expect for there to be a ton of people on campus on the weekends.</p>
<p>Baton Rouge itself is spread out. So while there a few things just north of campus (bars, blockbuster, fast food, and a couple of other things) that are walking distance, and some things south of campus (neighbor hood wal-mart, and other things) within biking distance, a lot of major stuff (movie theater and mall is notable) is a good distance from LSU requiring some other form of transportation. Public transportation sucks for the most part in Baton Rouge. My roommate my first semester was a guy from Michigan, who didn't have a car. He seemed to do alright for himself. I'd sometimes give him a lift or offer to take him to Wal-mart if I was going. Other times, he catch rides with other friends to hang out with them. So in point, your son at some point will want to meet and befriend someone with a car. </p>
<p>I probably have given you too much information, but I hope it helps in some way. Feel free to ask anymore questions.</p>
<p>EDIT:
Oh and meant to mention, that if your son is planning on doing engineering I would think there would be a labs he would take. Labs tend to be very small and you can meet a good number of people in them. Though they are usually taught by graduate or doctoral students, so it's not a "meet-the-professor" type class. One of the upper division labs I'm in right now has 12 people in it. My freshman year, I also worked in an Environmental engineering lab which would host a upper division lab on certain days, and if I remember correctly, it had something like 4 or 5 people in the class.</p>