According to D, there are not many engineering students graduating with honors as Vandy uses the same criteria for graduating with honors. As part of Engineering Council, they talked to the Dean, it seems the policy is unlikely to change.
Your thoughts? Or does that affect you? Or will it affect you?
@SincererLove : Honestly, your child or anyone should aim for DEPARTMENTAL honors attached to a thesis or something external like PBK or some other indicator. GPA based honors basically just says: “I have a high GPA” (which many would argue is sort of what you are supposed to do anyway as a high achiever OR one can strategically select courses and instructors to increase its chances. It may have very little to do with your impact in your area of interest so much as your ability to do what you are told in coursework) which any employer or graduate/professional school would be able to tell just by looking at the transcript. For those considering graduate school, VU has a good track record, as do other great places with engineering schools, of producing those with NSF Graduate Fellowships. And you can of course do other national fellowships/scholarships. I would imagine, that as long as they are not purely pre-health, engineering majors probably have much higher chances at Goldwater and maybe Churchill as well (VU has a good track record there too).
https://engineering.vanderbilt.edu/bme/UndergraduateProgram/HonorsProgram.php
It is more likely that someone will attain and maintain that threshold than the thresholds I just saw them set for “Latin Honors”(https://engineering.vanderbilt.edu/academic-services/latinhonors.php) and if a person is very serious about their education and wants their research and efforts as a student in engineering major to have an impact, this is one of the best ways to do so and is certainly more respectable than such honors anyway.
*Basically, I don’t think anyone should obsess over “Latin Honors”…there are actually some schools who do not offer GPA based honors. It is better to do as well as one can and find more meaningful ways to have an impact via academics and strive to get recognition for them. Ideally one should want to graduate as more of a scholar and not just say: “Like in high school, I am still a great student”. There is a difference. I know high achievers are obsessed with being labelled as having attained certain types of honors (especially GPA based because they are used to having a high GPA and being rewarded directly for it beyond “ooh this boosts my chances at X opportunity” in grade school), but I just think some honors are more important than others and are not based upon having the highest GPAs in college.