Take more honors classes or more chem?

Transfer Students
1

I’m at community college and looking to transfer into a top university. My top choice is Barnard College, others I’m looking at are: UCB, UCLA, NYU, Cornell.

My major will be physics/astrophysics and computer science. I will eventually go on to get my masters and hopefully phd in the physics/astrophysics field.

Would it be better to take honors classes in random general education subjects so gain more honors credits or take more upper level chemistry classes?

Option 1 would be to take additional general ed classes for the honors credits. I will complete the honors program even if I don’t chose this option, but I want to have more honors credits. Even though I already completed a majority of my general ed classes, I took most of them online so I’m not even sure they would transfer anyways. I found out about the honors program after so that’s why I didn’t take them to begin with.

Since I already took a bunch of general ed classes I would basically be stuck with the political science sequence. I am very interested in politics so I would not mind taking these honors classes, but the professor is really, really hard and I’m not sure I will be able to get a A.

Option 2 would be to not take more honors classes (even though I want as many as I can get) and take additional chemistry. I will already be taking chem 200 & chem 210 (chem 1& chem 2) but if I ditch the honors classes I could take additional upper level chemistry, which at my CC would be o-chem. I’m interested in chemistry as well but not that good at it.

Which would look better to top universities? If I chose option 1 I will have 36 honors units (which will break my school record as not many people even complete the program) as well as a political science AA. Not sure what I will need that for, but I love politics so it would be nice to have. With option 2 I will only have 27 honors units.

2

If your plan is to go into physics and computer science, organic chemistry won’t really be of much benefit. It is certainly applicable to specific areas of physics, but in any broad sense, it’s not particularly useful. Knowing more science is never a bad thing for someone that wants to go into a scientific field, but organic chemistry isn’t a ‘fun elective’ type of course. I’m a CC student and also a physics major. I faced the same dilemma last year. I took General Chemistry I and II last year, and really enjoyed them. I wanted to take organic chemistry this year, and in many ways I still wish I had. But I’m glad I didn’t. I have several friends that are currently in it, and it sounds like it’s a hard class. It would have been a lot to take on along with all of my math and physics along with my other classes from last semester and this semester.

Are you already planning on doing honors sections of your math and physics classes? Those are the ones that really matter. If you’re trying to transfer as a physics major, an honors section of a history class isn’t going to be matter so much. It might not really be worth the extra work that would be involved. I did honors sections in all of my math, physics, and chemistry courses. I’ve never done any honors sections in my GenEd classes though. I considered it in cultural anthropology, but I already had honors sections of physic II, calculus II, and general chemistry II that semester…so I opted against it.

3

@comfortablycurt My cc offeres no physics or chem classes in honors. The highest levels of honors they offer is calc 1, due to the honors coordinator not really caring about the program. The program only really offers gen ed classes, and not even all of them :frowning: I’m taking calc 1 in honors right now but that’s the highest level of honors classes I can go, hence why I am considering taking the political science sequence.

4

Well that sucks. Could you talk to professors about doing some kind of independent honors project in your later classes?

If that’s not a possibility, then I’d personally just take enough honors courses to graduate with honors.