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.