<p>Hello, I was accepted to the LS&A honors program and am considering applying for the MCSP learning community. I also plan on participating in marine option NROTC. It would also be nice to join a fraternity and I am a little confused on how the housing would work. I hope to major in politics, philosophy, and economics. After my time in the military I plan to attend business or law school.</p>
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<li><p>How will the combination of these three activities limit my course options? I understand that they all require specific courses for completion, and I want to be able to handle my course load to maintain a respectable GPA. I will have passed (hopefully) 6 AP exams by the time I enroll.</p></li>
<li><p>In terms of leadership opportunities, how redundant are the options offered by the NROTC program and MCSP? How specific are the community service opportunities to MCSP? I will probably involve myself in community service regardless of my participating in the program.</p></li>
<li><p>How does the MCSP housing compare to the honors housing? I hope to join Greek life for fun/networking, so would this learning community interfere with rushing or living in a frat?</p></li>
<li><p>How would this combination of programs limit my free time? How much of an impact would MCSP have in graduate admissions? </p></li>
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<p>Thank you to anyone who took the time to read/answer any of the questions on this thread</p>
<p>I thought ROTC didn’t give scholarships unless people were in Engineering? Also, you will be VERY busy if you are in ROTC and a fraternity, adding honors college and MCSP to the list and you may die. Best of luck though.</p>
<p>No clue why you want to do honors in the first place if you’re already going to receive an officer’s position, won’t really do much for you. MCSP is cool because you can spend as much or as little time as you want on it, not sure where it’s located next year. Time in the military will help with applications to grad school far more than the others, it’s seen as a huge plus.</p>
<p>ROTC attempts to serve the military as well as it can. It ranks different majors on the level that they are needed in the military. 85% of scholarships are offered to individuals in the technical/engineering fields. There is still considerable need for language, business, and other liberal arts designations. The competition for these positions is more rigorous.</p>
<p>My reason for enrolling in the honors program would be the increased quality of education and the courses that are curved more favorably. I also would like the housing option but if i did MCSP then that wouldn’t matter. Would honors, even completing the thesis, not help me considerably for grad school?</p>
<p>for business or law school, not so much. for a research based field, absolutely. from what i’ve seen, honors has a slightly more rigorous core (with annoying classes), and beyond that you may find honors discussions sections for classes but the majority of your classes will not be honors. a major advantage to taking the honors track is interaction with professors and the ability to do research, but once again since you are pre-professional this loses some of its luster since your most important aspects for law are lsats and gpa, and for business are work experience, gpa, and gmat scores. additionally, honors courses may be curved more favorably, but the average honors student is a much harder worker and slightly more intelligent than the average student as a whole, and the workload will be much longer. with fraternity life and rotc, that could be too much to handle.</p>
<p>The Honors Program is oddly disjoint. The “underclassman” program requires meeting some GPA, 8 honors courses, and maybe something else. The “upperclassman” program may require reapplication through your specific department, depending on your field. Plenty of people end up doing only one or the other.</p>
<p>The honors thesis would be awesome for grad school. The “Sophomore Honors Award” for successful completion of underclass Honors is not very exciting - I literally forgot to put this on my med school app. I don’t think being in underclassman Honors will help much with a thesis, since they are so department dependent.</p>
<p>I can’t really comment outside my major, but I don’t think one has to be in the Honors College to enroll in most Honors-designated classes. There might be spots reserved for Honors students, but I think Great Books is the only class reserved for Honors outright. If anyone knows for sure, feel free to correct me.</p>
<p>MichiganStick, so you feel that the undergraduate honors program didn’t benefit you at all when it came to applying to med school? Because I got accepted to honors, and I plan on being premed, but I don’t want to waste my time if the honors program isn’t all that great. Do you think it’s worth it? Or would it be more beneficial for a premed student to try to get into a learning community like HSSP?</p>
<p><em>Points of clarification</em>: I failed to mention above that the “upperclassman” Honors program is the actual Honors thesis. The reason it is disjoint is because some departments have their own set of requirements to determine who is eligible to write a thesis. I also need to clarify that what I’m calling the “underclassman” Honors ends after sophomore year, but that is an academic distinction and does not relate to the learning community.</p>
<p>I really enjoyed being in Honors. As a learning community, I think it’s great. “Lunch with Honors” happens about 1-3 times a month, where distinguished speakers are invited to speak to a small group of Honors students. (Honors also prides itself in providing ample, delicious food for these.) Honors also puts together a yearly cultural activity, in addition to a ton of other social events throughout the year. Honors housing may take a rap for being “all the nerds” or whatever, but you can’t argue against the location of South Quad.</p>
<p>From a purely academic standpoint though, I don’t think anything on my application would have been impossible if I hadn’t done “underclassman” Honors.</p>
<p>For example, the “Sophomore Honors Award” requires that you complete 8 Honors classes and maintain something like a 3.4 GPA while averaging 14 credits over the first 4 semesters. Earning the award by meeting those requirements is great, but everything that goes into it is already on your transcript. Also, for some odd reason, the award is not listed on your transcript, while things like University Honors (~Dean’s list) and Angell Scholar (all As) are.</p>
<p>There are some other things that Honors can help with academically. Honors has its own advising, but it’s on par with LSA advising. Honors recently started a summer fellowship for thesis research, but I don’t believe you need to be in the “underclassman” Honors program to apply, unless they changed that requirement recently.</p>
<p>I could ramble on, but there’s bound to be ton of pre-health students in both Honors and HSSP, so I don’t think you could go wrong with either. I’ve certainly had friends in HSSP who loved it and have been very successful. Lemme know if you have any other questions :]</p>