<p>However, the prospect of sending him to a school where there are 500 kids in a class does not exactly appeal to me. When I was a kid, I went one year to SUNY Albany, before transferring to Cornell, and remember those massive classes very well. Might as well just watch a videotape, or watch on-line.</p>
<p>Also, in the perfect world, I would prefer him going to a small school, where, in my opinion, it is easier to meet people, and make friends.</p>
<p>But we don't have the money to send him to a fancy private college.</p>
<p>Fortunately, my son will likely qualify for the honors program.</p>
<p>So my question is this:</p>
<p>How well does the Honors Program serve to diminish my perceived negatives about UF?.</p>
<p>And our my perceived negatives even accurate?</p>
<p>Only 771students have score of 32 or above on the ACT Composite out of 117 thousand students in Florida.</p>
<p>32? or 33? is the minimum cut for the Honors program. If your son is competive in this regard- explore private schools -your net cost may surprise you (merit aid)!</p>
<p>Honors classes are definitely smaller, but they aren’t available for every Gen-ed subject. Your son, unless he gets really lucky, will definitely have at least one class that’s a lecture-hall full of students.</p>
<p>I’ve only had two large lecture classes and doubt I’ll ever have any more, and I’m a sophomore (not in the honors program, but I’ve taken three honors classes). Only introductory classes seem to have a large amount of students, i.e. calculus and lower math, general physics, general chemistry, but the honors classes reduce these to about 30 students.</p>
<p>I would only recommend a school ranked higher than UF, not just a small liberal arts college for the sake of it.</p>
<p>My son is in honors and rooms at Hume Hall. He absolutely loves it. The advising is excellent. We looked into private colleges as well. He went to a private HS and was used to small classes and a close knit group of kids. I think he found that atmosphere in the honors dorm. With AP credits he has skipped a large number of freshman courses which tend to be the largest classes.<br>
UF is an excellent university. It has a variety of majors that cannot be matched by smaller LACs plus an active social atmosphere.
If your S is invited to join Honors, I would encourage you to attend the honors orientation program for students and parents. All aspects of the Honors program is detailed and most importantly you’ll meet many students in the program. They are most impressive.
My son was sold on UF during that weekend and hasn’t regretted it a minute. Nor have I.
Gook luck to you! It’s a hard process choosing colleges!</p>
<p>whether or not joining the honors college reduces your negative perception of what his experience at UF will be like, i think, has little to do with what it actually is. being in the honors program doesn’t mean much of anything to many [most?] of the kids in the honors program. more than anything its a gimmick to convince people like you that UF has a program to cater students who might get better offers elsewhere. its not a rip off or anything like that, but if your son will have problems at UF, the honors college will do little to prevent that.</p>
<p>there are some perks, but your son will not be segregated from the rest of the student body. there are many intro level classes he cant take in special sections through the honors college which are either online or have large sections. the very vast majority of other classes are not offered through the honors college.</p>
<p>that said, i don’t see why people have such a problem with large classes. you are welcome to ask questions whenever you’d like, the professors are usually miced up, there is typically an exorbitant amount of resources available to students in those classes (class-specific texts and workbooks, tutoringzone, smoking notes, free tutoring through several different outlets). the only real difference is that the professor doesn’t know your name unless you make a point of it. several times i’ve met people who i sat next to all semester in the classes. additionally, even the ones that you can watch online aren’t bad. they have great production value and allow rewinding and speeding up in case you missed something or already know the material.</p>
<p>in terms of making friends, i think the idea that making friends is easier at a small lac is bollocks. yeah, you’re more likely to know everyone in your class, but just because you live in a smaller world doesn’t mean that the quantity of people you know goes up, or that you’re more likely to have a bunch of facebook friends who don’t really want to hang out with you at a large school. i suspect that your experiences with making better friends has more to do with cornell having been a better fit for you then SUNY:A…</p>
<p>Honors college has three great perks. Except for the first semester, you get first day registration. Second is that Honors has its own seperate advisors whom you retain all four years. Third, Hume hall is great (like all dorms each has its own personality).</p>
<p>I never had a problem with large lecture classes personally. They never seemed impersonal to me…you meet the students around you and that happens whether there are 30 or 300. And students were still welcome to ask questions.</p>
<p>UF has so many clubs, sports, special interest groups that no matter what any student has great opportunities to find a good circle of friends. But they can’t sit in their room! And if you like football, there’s nothing greater than being a Gator!</p>
<p>And it’s hard to beat the financial advantage of going to UF over privates. No small consideration especially if grad school is in the future.</p>
<p>What private schools did your kid pass up when he decided to go to UF.</p>
<p>Yes, my son will probably go to graduate school.</p>
<p>Also, we have done the prepaid college thing, which is a lot nicer than paying $50,000 a year for a private school.</p>
<p>Plus, my son will probably have about FOURTEEN AP courses under his belt by the time he graduates, so could probably graduate UF in about 2 1/2 years.</p>
<p>Even so, it would be hard to pass up going to a University of Pennsylvania or a Columbia, don’t you think?</p>
<p>Yeah, I’d pass up UPenn and Columbia. Some of the decision has to be with what the intended major is.
My son was accepted to many colleges with substantial scholarships. But even when adding that in UF still made more sense financially to us.</p>
<p>If you have the funds, I wouldn’t pass up UPenn or Columbia. I passed up Williams and settled for UF due to financial reasons, but if the financial issue weren’t so large, I would probably have been better situated there.</p>