UNF's Hicks Honors College, FAU's Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College vs. University of South Florida

My daughter has been accepted to Hicks Honors college, Harriet L.Wilkes Honors colleges and University of South Florida for the fall term 2019. We need to confirm the acceptance offer within next few days but still very confused with the choice. My daughter has good academic background but she has shy feeling personality and has been suffering from attention deficit disorder therefore, she could not focus in big classes. She is planning to pursue degree in business and she is more inclined towards university of south Florida because of the good ranking. I will appreciate if someone could provide any insight (pros vs. cons) of above mentioned colleges. I have not heard about the Hicks Honors and Wilkes Honors college before in the forums. Any guidance in this regard will be highly appreciated.

Thanks

@skylander1 Congrats on the offers. Which did she decide? Presuming she was accepted to USF Honors College, too. Was UCF Burnett Honors College considered? Did you check out the Wilkes campus 40 miles north of FAU?

Piggybacking on this thread, how would one compare Wilkes versus NCF? Both are exclusive honors colleges. The former shares the campus with 1400 students while the latter gives no grades. What about the culture and atmosphere differences? TIA.

@onthewestfence I can’t say much about FAU’s Wilkes Honors other than what I can compare it to on the website, but I can say New College is a residential college rather than a commuter college and that changes the feel of the school significantly - that will probably be one of the biggest differences between the two. In addition, I can say that New College’s students are very, very much intellectually-oriented, it’s a non-competitive atmosphere academically and the quality of education is very high. Most students have very high aspirations for themselves. But any student interested in New College should really do a lot of research on the school and campus culture - as famously repeated on campus, “New College is not for everyone” but for those who find a fit at New College, you absolutely flourish. And I can’t say enough about the narrative evaluations instead of grades and the contract system - it allowed me to take classes I would have otherwise shied away from for fear of doing poorly, and the narratives really, really helped me pinpoint specific academic successes and shortcomings in order to improve on those areas. Even outside of discussing New College, I’m now a strong advocate for narrative evaluations instead of grades. I’m now a graduate student at a school that does give grades and I find that the amount of feedback I get has dropped down to virtually none. I can’t tell you what my strengths and weaknesses are academically because outside of a few comments on papers and letter or number grades, professors only give you specific feedback when you schedule a meeting with them - and that’s if they have the time or willingness to do so.