<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I'm planning on majoring in Mechanical Engineering (Deciding among Mech, Electrical, and Industrial) and was accepted into the Honors program.</p>
<p>So far the only incentives I see in doing this is </p>
<p>-Priority in Choosing classes
-Looks good if I graduate with Honors (Right?)
-Interesting, liberal arts education.</p>
<p>Anyone who has been in the Honors Program at Iowa State, what do you have to say about it with a major in engineering?</p>
<p>My son is just finishing up his first year at ISU. He is an Aerospace major and participated in the honors program. He enjoyed the first year of Honors but he is not continuing with it next year.</p>
<p>My impression is that there is not a big benefit for engineers to graduate with honors - the engineering college already has a very strong job placement rate. Plus it is harder for engineers to graduate with honors than in LA because you can’t double apply your classes. My son said something to the effect that if he would need to take graduate classes to get a degree with honors.</p>
<p>That being said, I would recommend doing the honors program your freshman year. It’s another group of people to meet and they do a lot of activities together. Most importantly you can apply for an Honors Research project. My son was selected and he enjoyed that. He was able to pick from projects in any field, it didn’t have to be related to his major. He chose a genetics project just to shake things up a bit but a friend of his that’s a ChemE worked on developing a form of synthetic insulin so the opportunities really vary. The job recruiters he’s talked to so far seem to be impressed with it on his resume and the professor he worked with offered him paid employment when it was done.</p>
<p>He did not see a benefit of registering early since he was able to apply over 50 AP credits from high school but if you are starting with 0 credits it certainly wouldn’t hurt.</p>
<p>I go here now an I would suggest to do the honors program for freshman year and then drop it regardless. Because you will meet a lot of people, use there special building which I always want to study in, AND picking your class first, because as you will soon figure out you never get the schedule you want so scheduling early is nice. You don’t really have to do much to be a part of it but the benefits are nice just dont kill yourself over trying to stay in it. Writing from experience</p>
<p>Remodeler, so he can continue the Honors Research Project despite not being with Honors?</p>
<p>ComeSailAway, Did being in Honors hurt your gpa the first year or was it manageable. Or was there not much of a difference in the courseload compared to your peers in non-honors?</p>
<p>Thanks, both of you. These were the types of responses I was hoping for. I’ll for sure do Honors freshman year. We’ll see how that goes in the future!</p>