<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>I'm considering applying for UW Honors... and from what I've heard about it, I've heard just as many bad things about UW Honors as good things, so I am really split on whether I should apply...</p>
<p>Would honors help or hurt should I decide to major in engineering or CSE? Also, would it help me if I come into the UW with around 80 credits from AP/IB?</p>
<p>Thank you for your opinions!</p>
<p>There are actually two kinds of UW Honors: Interdisciplinary Honors and Dept Honors. Sounds like you are referring to the former, which requires 9 5-credit Honors courses, only three of which can be “used” in your major. Since honors courses include more rigorous versions of the math and science prereqs that you need to take for Engineering, honors can actually work better for engineering majors than other majors, in that you can satisfy 1/3 of the requirements with courses you were planning to take anyway, and fulfill all of your distribution requirements (typically just 24 credits in engineering) with honors courses.</p>
<p>However, if you have lot of transfer credits, these will probably either fulfill distribution requirements and/or fulfill your intro math/science coursework requirements, meaning that you might not have to take the courses I mentioned above at all. In this case, honors is not just a good deal as it would require more credits than you would otherwise need to graduate.</p>
<p>Having said this, there is no harm in applying for honors, as it doesn’t obligate you to anything. You can drop out anytime and you can also apply after you are admitted.</p>
<p>For Dept Honors, you apply to the dept of your major after you have been admitted to the major and meet the requirements of their honors program (varies by dept).</p>
<p>I highly discourage applying for honors if you are planning to go into an engineering related major. There are alot of required courses for engineering, and along with the 45 credit honors requirement, your schedule won’t have spaces for any other courses. AP/IB credits cannot satisfy the honors requirements, and the requirement to take 3 honors science courses will only pull down your GPA.</p>
<p>+1 +1 triseradad and propro’s posts.</p>
<p>It doesn’t hurt to apply to Honors. I started off in Honors and dropped it after two years because I wasn’t making progress in “Honors coursework” and didn’t find it very helpful overall. However, I made some of my closest friends through Honors orientation and classes and the initial networking was definitely very helpful. :)</p>
<p>Please don’t hesitate to ask more specific questions! I’m also a cs major, if that steers any of your questions to more cs-y-ish ones.</p>
<p>I wish more CSers would stay in college honors. It’s nice to have different perspectives, and humanities and biological sciences are really heavily overrepresented. :/</p>
<p>Thank you for all your inputs (especially speedsolver!). </p>
<p>I unfortunately have decided not to apply for the honors program because I’m very certain that I will go into an engineering related major. I also already have a considerable amount of AP/IB credit and am expecting more, so I want to take advantage of my credits.</p>
<p>@hitachiota: I am also going into engineering and I didn’t apply for honors because essentially it doesn’t help engineering majors too much since its a less competitive major for grad school. :)</p>