<p>ivyleaguewannabe, that is possibly the most helpful post I’ve seen this year. I’ve had a suspicion that several honors programs are pretty much nonexistant, including UA. To an outsider like myself, this is hard to fathom. It seems like many of the programs would hardly effect an increase in expenses to the university.</p>
<p>In the case of UA they don’t even try to present a good website for honors.
So it sounds like you’ve taken the time to look into it and there’s nothing there. No surprise. Perhaps it’s what Kurt Vonnegut would have called a granfalloon.</p>
<p>And we will move ASU to the top of the safety school list.</p>
<p>Really, no employer is going to care about which honors college someone went to. What’s more important is the reputation of the school, and ASU is considered the dumber party-school for kids that couldn’t get into UA.</p>
<p>From experience, some of the honors classes are legitimately better than non-honors, but others just pound on more busy work. If you’re expecting the honors college to be some sort of ivy-leage-esque experience, then no, UA’s is not that.</p>
<p>I don’t think we’re looking at recruiting statistics here, we’re looking at overall experience. </p>
<p>But I’d also like to point out that ASU sits nicely in the Phoenix Metro area allowing for more employment opportunities through recruitment than in Tucson.</p>
<p>Cities which are 2 hours driving distance apart from each other would hardly have mutually exclusive recruiters coming to their universities. I think the OP is pretty much asking an impossible question since no one here has been through both honors programs. So the important question draws around to whether or not the honors college experience is something that’s even worth differentiating.</p>
<p>But just reading the ASU college’s description, it sounds like it’s being built to fulfill some sort of crazy idealized college fantasy of groups of smart people coming together to learn. It’d be just as easy to argue that this model produces socially awkward - for lack of a better term- dorks. I personally wouldn’t enjoy that amount of smothering in a program. What I know is the UA program is meant to be more of a conduit and less of an experience. They’re just as willing to assist you with getting research opportunities on campus, applying for national scholarships, etc etc as ASU. Yeah we also have a few honors dorms and study lounges too.</p>
<p>To me, an honors program is supposed to be a mark on your record that you’re a cut above the rest going in from the start and that you’re willing to take more advanced coursework to prove it. Some perks thrown in are nice, but it seems like ASU is doing is bordering on frivolous.</p>
<p>Employers do care about whether you go to Barrett or not at ASU. Many employers recruit only Barrett students at ASU. That is why it is important if you go to ASU you shall try to get into Barrett.</p>
<p>Just a note to UAKid: It’s great that you are so enthusiastic about your school, but there is no need to denigrate another school. That stereotype you posted – “ASU is considered the dumber party-school for kids who could not get into UA” – is at least 10 years out of date. The fact is that the overall student bodies at the two schools have nearly identical stats:</p>
<p>mid-50% SAT CR for UA: 480-600 for ASU: 470-600
mid-50% SAT M for UA: 500-620 for ASU: 480-610
mid-50% ACT for UA: 21-26 for ASU: 20-26 </p>
<p>Last year’s freshman class at ASU had 169 NM Scholars and UA had 61. Even accounting for ASU’s much larger class, ASU still attracted proportionately far more NM Scholars: 17.4 NMS per 1000 freshmen at ASU vs. 9.1 NMS per 1000 freshmen at UA. If ASU were truly a “dumb party school,” as you claim, it certainly would not be able to attract so many smart kids from all across the nation. Barrett Honors College has a lot to do with ASU’s attraction for these kids.</p>
<p>And I really don’t understand your comment about how it’s easy to argue that Barrett produces “socially awkward dorks” because it promotes the idea of smart people coming together to learn. Do you also believe that other settings where there are lots of smart people learning together (Ivy League schools, top LACs, etc.) also turns them into dorks?</p>
<p>And by the way, I have no dogs in this hunt. (Both my husband and I went to colleges back East, as did our children.) I’m just an AZ resident that willingly supports both ASU and UA (and also NAU) with my tax dollars, but I get tired of these constant put-downs from students at both schools.</p>
<p>Good for you worried_mom, you really did hit the nail on the head here. Also, last time I checked, U of A got ranked in the top 10 party schools this year, but ASU didn’t :D. I really believe that such things don’t matter. I’m a graduate of the BHC and ASU, and it did me well, but I think I would have faired pretty well at U of A too. Where you go is ALWAYS secondary to your own efforts and intelligence. </p>
<p>Oh, just to clarify ASU and the B. family didn’t pay for the new honors college. They had it built in exchange for giving the profits of students living there to the builder. I think ASU gets ownership completely in like 20 years.</p>
<p>I apologize for my lack of clarification. I meant to say that it still appears the popular opinion is that ASU is inferior to UA even though it may not be true. I wasn’t expressing my own “claims” there, even though I do think that University of ____ schools are often inherently better off financially (and effectively academically) than ____ State schools. It’s just like how many still think USC is a spoiled white kid school, even though everyone at the school I’ve talked to have said that it’s just not true. Reputations for schools unfortunately stick long after the trigger point has disappeared. I haven’t done any real figure comparisons between ASU and UA since I only applied to UA (I’m not from arizona so UA was in my “safety” list). Even academic statistics alone shouldn’t be used to say one school is better than another. I got into other places like UCSD, USC, and UT Austin, but I just happened to get a better vibe (how’s that for scientific :)) from UA. Personally I don’t care much for this rivalry between ASU and UA since it’s like comparing an orange to an apple…i’ll eat both of them regardless of their properties.</p>
<p>My dork comment isn’t meant to imply that the program actually does that. But, reading the descriptions posted in this thread are my only way of gauging what it’s like, the program seems very close knit. I was just presenting the one viewpoint where close knit things tend to amplify whatever they’re based around. And, if you have a close-knit academic group, you could conceivably end up with dorks (still working on a better word). It’d be no different than having jocks on a football team since that’s a very close knit group as well.</p>
<p>mmcdowe is still right, the program can be amazing but it really depends on what you’re gonna make of it. I’m sure there’s loads of kids that go to Stanford expecting it to be the greatest school in the world only to find all the hard-core academics aren’t all that exciting. My ultimate goal isn’t to start a debate on superiority of schools or programs, but rather the importance of fact gathering first as best as you can, then deciding what’s “best”.</p>
<p>My question though for anyone with ASU honors experience…do you guys actually get honors classes for your major or is it only honors general education courses (english, humanities, historics). UA’s program is the later, which disappoints me. We have honors contracts and the like but they’re pretty hassling.</p>
<p>Well, I just thought of it a bit further, and there are indeed some major-classes here that can be taken for honors, but they’re pretty sparse and really die out beyond sophomore level classes. Best explanation I have is that there isn’t much interest in an honors microprocessors class when the normal version is very challenging as it is.</p>
<p>There are some, especially in honors business which is basically its own school. Things like genetics and mid-level courses are common honors only. There are a lot of graduate level seminars, but they don’t usually fill a lot of reqs. We also have the option to do honors contracts like U of A. I think it is mostly a matter of money rather than interest, and maybe also because the classes tend to be smaller at that point. The really advanced courses tend to not be honors only, but honestly most of them in my major were filled mostly by honors students anyways (we get first dibs on scheduling, so all the nicely timed upper division blocks get gobbled up :D)</p>
<p>The college of law also offers a lot of honors-only classes each year through a program called Project Excellence. Any honors student can take them, too.</p>
<p>Yes, its a program where you can take law classes with law students. They don’t count towards a law degree, but they are an excellent thing to put on your resume (if you do well!)</p>
<p>The following was copied from Barrett’s web site about Project Excellence:</p>
<p>Project Excellence is a partnership between the ASU Sandra Day O’Connor Law School and the Barrett Honors College designed to expose Barrett Honors College students to Law courses and Law faculty. The Partnership familiarizes ASU Law faculty with the brightest students at ASU, helps to attract more National Merit Scholars to the BHC and attract more top BHC students to the Law School. Project Excellence is currently conceived as having three components: courses, mentoring, and scholarship possibilities. In essence, Juniors and Seniors in good standing with the Barrett Honors College who have completed the lower division requirements (or the equivalent to lower division) have the opportunity to register for a set of HON 494 classes that are actually seats in College of Law classes. These are listed in the early registration material. Interested students must receive special permission in order to register for one of these courses.</p>
<p>When they say “special permission,” they really mean an override by an honors advisor. Those are usually pretty easy to get as long as you are in good standing. The requirements for staying in the honors college means you are still in good standing, so if you are applying for these classes, you are in good standing. I know sophomores who took these classes too.</p>
<p>Phair, I do not believe you know what you are talking about. Both UA and ASU are good schools that offer a lot of opportunities for those who are willing to seek them out.</p>
<p>It looks as though Phair1x23 could use a slightly better school - one that at minimum teaches the difference between “your” and “you’re.” That knowledge will be a basic requirement at any college.</p>
<p>I don’t think honors college should be a deciding factor on where you decide to go; certainly, that’s a benefit for ASU as the honors college down here is shoddy at best. But, I think more weight should be given to the program at each school – say for instance, you want to go into supply chain or biomedical engineering, then ASU is the easy choice. In contrast, if you want to go into Optical Engineering or Entrepreneurship, than UA is the easy choice.</p>
<p>ASU certainly offers a lot more majors, and if you’re interested in those and they’re unique to ASU, then by all means, use that as justification to go to ASU over UA. Just don’t make the presence/absence of honors college a deciding factor.</p>
<p>My understanding, from both my own experiences as well as stories from my friends, suggests that the difference between Barretts and UA honors college isn’t as great as it seems; they claim that there are a lot of extracurricular opportunities to get involved in Barretts, but if you’re not interested in what they have to offer, then it’s about the same as UA honors college in terms of academics. Though, Barretts does have the new honors dorms which sound really really nice, much better than Yuma, Yavapai or PSP.</p>