<p>So, I have a friend who got accepted into the UMDCP Honors program. However, when he stayed at a dorm room overnight, he said it was basically a beer drinking, party atmosphere in which hardly anyone concentrated on work? Is this true? Can any "veteran" Honors students give some insight onto how the Honors program really operates?</p>
<p>“when he stayed at a dorm room overnight,”</p>
<p>Which dorm? An Honors only dorm? A weekend?</p>
<p>There are a lot of Honors kids who fit into the “work hard, party hard” crowd. That said, there are also a lot of Honors kids who are very focused on their work. There are also a lot of Honors kids who don’t care at all about their work. Everyone finds their crowd at Maryland.</p>
<p>And to be honest, as a senior with 4 years of college life experience…taking the time to not on your work now and again is part of a healthy college experience.</p>
<p>Wow, I am sorry to hear of your friend’s experience. DS is an overnight host and I know he went out of his way when he had overnight guests to make them feel welcome and show them all that UMD has to offer. </p>
<p>He is an Honors Ambassador, but I will have to agree with somebodynew that he does enjoy himself as much as he studies : ) I hope he never loses sight of his goals either!!</p>
<p>His experience with Honors has been (depending on the class) sometimes consisting of unnecessary busy work he says. The class sizes have been smaller, but overall, they are not much harder than he would have expected.</p>
<p>So the Honors program is very diverse? And speaking of class size, just how small are they? Is it small enough to get to establish a more personal relationship with your professor? (And plumazul, I have no idea. I assume its Gemstone)</p>
<p>Honors Seminars typically have a cap of 20 student. I took an H-version Calculus III class and it was 25-30 students. Establishing personal relationship with a professor is easy no matter what the class size is, you just have to do the one thing almost NOBODY does…participate in class AND go to office hours.</p>
<p>Jewels_08 - My son would like to spend a night to see what the school is like first hand. I didn’t see anywhere on the website about this possibility. How do you go about signing up to spend a night?</p>
<p>I would have to say that moving from a rather sheltered and nerdy high school experience to the dorms at UMD (even an honors dorm!) was absolutely shocking. Yes, there’s a lot of partying. But then, there’s 100s of students per dorm, 3 dorms per cluster within feet of each other, and 9 dorms total on the North end of campus. That’s a lot of youthful energy in one area…</p>
<p>And I would agree with somebodynew that: </p>
<ol>
<li>There’s work hard, party hard people</li>
<li>There’s work hard, don’t party people</li>
<li>There’s party hard, don’t work people</li>
</ol>
<p>All within honors. </p>
<p>Honors is most certainly diverse in terms of students’ personalities and I think that is the case at any college. Harvard and MIT party pretty hard, too, I hear, and isn’t Animal House based on a Dartmouth fraternity? But one thing is true, and that’s that honors students are on the whole very smart (though group 3 clearly isn’t wise!).</p>
<p>4boysmom,</p>
<p>DS hosted two more students in his room last night. Several of the guys on his floor did.</p>
<p>[Overnight</a> Stay Program](<a href=“http://www.resnet.umd.edu/osp/]Overnight”>http://www.resnet.umd.edu/osp/)</p>
<p>I posted the link for it, but just search “overnight stay program” on the umd.edu website. The next overnight stay is April 15th and it says registration is closed. Place a call though, maybe it’s not too late!!</p>