Has anyone else gotten a rejection from the honors college for a very high achieving student? We are scratching our heads over here. My son’s SAT was 1510, GPA 4.6 and lots of AP. His stats and essays were good enough to get him into the engineering programs at UC Berkeley, UCLA and Cal Poly SLO and a few others! He is local to Cal Poly Pomona and was accepted into engineering, looking at the Honor’s College as a good way to stay local and get a great education. I know they look at the essay…he wrote similar things for the other schools…what other criteria are they looking at?
I don’t know exactly what they were looking for.
BUT, when we attended the Showcase of Excellence, they said that in applying to the Honors College, grades/test scores did not matter. Once they extend the invitation, they assume that the student is qualified on that account. They make the decision based on the essays, and possibly the teacher recommendation.
They said that they wanted the student to be passionate, and they wanted to get to know them through the essays. I’m also guessing that they wanted to see some kind of commitment to a cause, since they do a lot of social/charitable work in the Honors Program.
Hope that helps.
Thanks for your input Mom2Engineers. My son heard the same thing at the Showcase. He must not have hit the right note in his essays. He has several passions and also does volunteer work. We were so surprised, really didn’t see that coming. Honestly, I think its kind of strange that academic achievement is not a primary consideration for entry to an Honor’s College. He will have the option to apply next year as a sophmore.
Academic achievement is definitely considered, as only those with a certain eligibility index score are invited to apply (and EI is based on GPA and test scores). However once that hurdle has been passed, they want t know about other aspects of the students.
I’m guessing that this is their way of assessing on qualitative factors, given that there are none in the admissions process. I really have no idea what they were looking for in the essays though. My daughter just answered honestly.