Northeastern Honors College

Looking through the decisions from yesterday it seems quite a few people were accepted into the honors college. It wasn’t really highlighted on our visits to NEU and since my son was one of those accepted I was hoping to gain some insight. Their website has some information, but not a great amount and unfortunately the Honors College visit days coincide with our spring break in the south.

-Is there anyone on here that is or has been part of the program that can offers pros and cons?
-Is it substantially more rigorous than the typical curriculum at NEU?
-Is the sequestered housing seen as an advantage or disadvantage?
-It seems like many of the benefits center around global experiences. Is this a big difference?
-Does the awarded “honors scholarship” go away if he opts not to take part in the honors program?

Thanks so much in advance. Our son is very excited to be a Husky!

Not in it myself but very familiar. Short version is it’s a few perks, not any significantly different experience.

Pros:

  • A few smaller intro class sections
  • Top housing options first two years
  • Some more global opportunities (possibly scholarships? hard to find info exactly though)

Cons:

  • Housing options are the more expensive options
  • More requirements for graduating with honors

No, the difference will be only in a select few 1000-2000 level courses.

Since all the housing is within a 5-10 minute walk of each other, the housing doesn’t tend to be too isolating. Generally, I’d say the benefits outweigh the cons here but that’s a great question/consideration.

One of them I think, yes.

I think asking admissions/financial aid that would be the best route.

Congrats!

Hopefully someone who has done Honors will chime in with their experience but in the meantime I will offer this. Northeastern has an Honors Program, not an Honors College. It primarily consists of various perks and opportunities that are not available to other students or to which Honors students get preferred access. Honors course sections may be smaller than other sections. It may provide better access to research opportunities with faculty. Honors requirements would not interfere with students major requirements.

Northeastern is urging all students to get an international experience either through study abroad or international coop. In the past the Honors scholarship included an additional grant that could be applied to the cost of this international experience. Was that mentioned in the offer?

Yes, there was mention of an additional 6K that could be used for global experiences and possible research grants.

My daughter was part of the honors program (attended 2012-2016). The program has changed a little since then but I can highlight her experience.

Housing - For her freshman year honors housing was in IV. All honors freshman were required to live there. She loved living in IV, having a dining room in the lobby, AC for the hot days, and especially hanging out in the lobby and basement areas with her friends. Being in a non-traditional freshman dorm (IV has singles or doubles with a private bathroom in between the two rooms) cost a little more, but was not an impediment to making friends. Her current friends (now 2 1/2 years after graduating) are the kids she met freshman year. She chose to live in honors housing sophomore year also (at the time it was optional - honors students only could choose to live there but were not required to). It was again more expensive (WVF), and several of her freshman year friends did not live there. I think at that time they also had honors only buildings for upper classmen. For housing selection, it only added to the rooms she could choose from (so she could pick during her 3rd and 4th year from honors and non-honors housing). Housing selection at NEU is a very stressful process and having more places to choose from was a plus. I want to add that her gang of friends, formed freshman year, were not all honors students. They hung out in IV and it was no problem signing in her non-honors friends. This was also true later on when they were all in different buildings. Honors freshman move in a few days earlier and spend some time doing team building activities.

Classes - There are two types of honors classes.

Honors sections of introductory classes. What makes them different depends upon the subject. For math or econ it would be a smaller section and may negate the need for having a recitation class in addition to the regular class. However they covered the exact same material. For CS, the honors classes were smaller, but went faster and covered more material (including the honors section final being longer).

The other classes are honors only elective classes. There are typically ones for more basic and more advanced students (the basic ones are for freshman only). They are usually interdisciplinary, marrying two areas of study. My daughter loved the one she took freshman year - about cold war spies. The advanced ones have mixed reviews, since they are not classes taught every year, the instructors sometimes struggle to figure out the class as they go along. My daughter didn’t take any advanced ones and some of her friends who did complained about the syllabus not being correct or the workload being uneven or unreasonable.

There is a freshman one credit class required your first semester that is an introduction to college and has times when all the honors freshman do stuff together.

Graduating with Honors-
Although my daughter was in the honors program for all four years (I don’t think the requirements to stay in are very strict - there is a minimum GPA), she chose not to get an honors degree. At the time, you needed a certain number of honors classes to graduate with an honors degree, including an advanced honors elective. She made the decision to take some more practical electives instead or the honors electives and fell one honors class short. Nobody cared - she did get invited to every honors graduation festivity, including getting an honors cord. It is just that her degree is not an honors degree. You need to check the website to see if there is any change to this. She has no regrets as those electives have served her well (intro to accounting, intro to CS, and public speaking)

Global stuff
There is usually a dialogue (that is the summer abroad class) that is honors only. They used to go to Italy, but I believe this has changed. They also gave honors students a global scholarship. One of my daughter’s friends, did a dialogue basically for free using this scholarship (it not required for it to be the honors dialogue.)

Scholarships
The honors scholarship is new (maybe the past two years). My daughter had a dean’s scholarship. I don’t know what the honors scholarship restrictions are. My daughter did have a friend who explored leaving the program (not sure why - maybe the cost of the honors housing sophomore year?), but in the end followed through and graduated with an honors degree. Many of my daughter’s friends in the honors program back then were national merit scholars who at that time got tuition 100% covered (something NEU no longer does).

I think that covers it, I am happy to answer any other questions.

Thank you so much to those who have taken the time to respond thus far.

What stats did your son have? Just curious since I did ED II and I’m wondering whether I’ll be offered honors.

ACT 35
GPA Weighted 4.4 Unweighted 3.85
9 AP’s. 5 are this year. All three 5’s and one 4 on the ones he has taken.
Marching band and drum line all 4 years. Drum major junior year
Published Pathology research article in Modern Pathology
Runs a charity with his sibling/cousins and has been on 3 mission trips to Guatemala.
I think his essay was pretty good. It was very unique.

I thought of something else I forgot to mention. My daughter belonged to the honors book club for the four years she attended. I think they read 2 books a semester (sometimes they met over the summer). The Honors program supplied the books (don’t remember how they were chosen) and snacks for the meetings. They remain friends today and are a more diverse group than my daughter’s other NEU friends - varying in ages and majors, etc. Those who remained in Boston after graduation (most of the group), still have a book club and this past year even had a friendsgiving together.

Ahh, okay. That makes me think I have a real good shot at honors college.
ACT 34
GPA Weighted 4.3 Unweighted 3.7
15 APs. All 4s and 5s.
FBLA national and state level winner.
Student government.
Tons of computer science ECs, esp community service oriented ones.

I think the Honors Program is selected by college/major and is a more holistic even that regular admissions – it is not just based on scores and GPA…

Both my Ds were/are Honors… besides frosh housing (and soph for one), and some smaller sections of regular classes there was nothing too special about honors. If you complete the 6 honors classes which is pretty easy to do, you graduate with an honors cord at the ceremony. Latin honors are for anyone with certain GPAs. All Honors have gotten the $6000 towards global coop or study abroad, while Honors since the last couple of years can also use some of that $6,000 towards a dialogue class after frosh year. And they do offer an honors only dialogue and alternative spring break… I don’t think students focus much on who is in honors and who is not…

The minimum GPA to keep the honors scholarship is 3.0. they give you a semester to come repair your GPA if you lapse, but then after that you lose it.

The housing perks are nice and so is the global 6k scholarship. Nice opportunities.

Looks like from this webpage - that 3.0 is needed for all merit scholarships - http://catalog.northeastern.edu/undergraduate/admission/merit-scholarships/

This has all been very helpful.