We just came back wowed by Barrett Honors College at ASU

College Search & Selection
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<p>Due to our son's unshakeable passion for marching band percussion, we were faced with the seemingly-impossible task of looking for a place where an intimate and challenging residential education, a talented and dynamic peer environment, the opportunities of a flagship university (such as a big-time band), and out-of-state affordability could overlap. We made a visit to Arizona State last week, hoping that the honors college might outweigh the negatives that we assumed we'd find - huge, impersonal, barren, stifling, overwhelming, etc. . . . </p>

<p>We never found any negatives. The honors college was dazzling, but so were ASU and Tempe. Everyone went out of their way to welcome and assist us, the campus and the city are gorgeous, and the place is manageable in size. The honors staff rolled out the red carpet for us, lined us up with student guides, and got us together with their star faculty and their Dean. S's older sisters attend/ed Harvard - Barrett reminded us of the Harvard residential colleges in terms of its support, mentoring, facilities and community. They begin mentoring and coaching their students as freshmen for major international study scholarships, and they post the pictures of the recipients on the walls of their hallways - there are hundreds. Barrett students' stats and data suggest that if it was a stand-alone institution, it might be a public Wake Forest.</p>

<p>S's student overnight host got a bunch of his friends together and they all took him on a moonlight bike tour of campus. The Homecoming events and football game were a blast. The school spirit for both Barrett and ASU were infectious. It'll be up to S to make his own choice, but he came back blown away by the place (he also came back with two ASU t-shirts :)). </p>

<p>ASU has a scholarship estimator on its website. I asked a couple staff members on campus how dependable that estimator usually is, because we needed the generous scholarship that it suggested in order to make Barrett a good OOS value. We returned home Sunday night to find the scholarship offer in our mail.</p>

<p>I'm a career university administrator and I've visited hundreds of campuses; I came home from Barrett very impressed. Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.</p>

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<p>Diploma still says ASU, right?</p>

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<p>Great report gadad, thanks for sharing it. I think it is so important for those who are looking at colleges to see there are many, many great academic/personal options for them. </p>

<p>Many of the high achievers on this site will be drawn to the more well-known academic elites. But, like you and your son found, there are some terrific state publics whose Honors Colleges give their students awesome opportunities for success.</p>

<p>With your background in academia, coupled with the comparison of your girls’ experience at one of the “elites”, your post should be highly valued by any student or family looking at ASU (or other Honors Colleges in state public schools). Good luck to you both!</p>

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<p>Love the report. It sounds like a wonderful option.</p>

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<p>I have been eagerly awaiting this report. Thanks so much! Good to hear your positive perspective. Any sense of the budget cuts at ASU and how they will affect Barrett’s?
Also, any sense of career services and what they offer the honors students in particular? What about internship opportunities?</p>

<p>If you have lingering concerns, what are they?
How do the Barrett’s students feel about the classes they take with the “regular” ASUers?
What kind of student would not enjoy or be well suited to the Barrett’s experience, even if admitted?</p>

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<p>Just sayin’</p>

<p>[ASU</a> has Lost its Focus to Provide Undergraduate Education for Arizona Residents](<a href=“http://hispanic.cc/asu_has_lost_its_focus_to_provide_undergraduate_education_for_arizona_residents.htm]ASU”>http://hispanic.cc/asu_has_lost_its_focus_to_provide_undergraduate_education_for_arizona_residents.htm)</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.asu.edu/pb/documents/abor_session_march2011.pdf[/url]”>http://www.asu.edu/pb/documents/abor_session_march2011.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Barrons…What’s your beef? You’re being kind of catty. </p>

<p>GaDad…</p>

<p>Glad to hear that your visit went so well.<br>
What’s the process to get admitted to Barrett? How many apply? How many are accepted? When do they make Barrett acceptance decisions? </p>

<p>We returned home Sunday night to find the scholarship offer in our mail.</p>

<p>Congrats! How much did they offer?</p>

<p>From Barron’s link
*
TEMPE, Ariz. (By Tamar Lewin, NYT) May 6, 2009 — When Michael Crow became president of Arizona State University seven years ago, he promised to make it “The New American University,” with 100,000 students by 2020. It would break down the musty old boundaries between disciplines, encourage cutting-edge research and entrepreneurship to drive the new economy, and draw in students from under-served sectors of the state.</p>

<p>He quickly made a name for himself, increasing enrollment by nearly a third to 67,000 students, luring big-name professors and starting interdisciplinary schools in areas like sustainability, projects with partners like the Mayo Clinic and Sichuan University in China, and dozens of new degree programs*</p>

<p>Sounds like things are happening. I’m guessing the 100k students won’t all be on one campus.</p>

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<p>Barrett offers a great opportunity.</p>

<p>As far as Barrons … perhaps he got some BCS weighing down his liver:</p>

<p>[NCAA</a> College Football BCS Standings Week 10 - ESPN](<a href=“http://espn.go.com/college-football/bcs]NCAA”>http://espn.go.com/college-football/bcs)</p>

<p>19 Arizona State<br>
20 Wisconsin</p>

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<p>I dislike hypemeisters and snake oil salesmen. ASU has both in spades in their Crowing president. All hat and no cattle. How many of the people he conned into going to ASU with all sorts of promises will be around in 5 years once they find the hype will be going unfulfilled?
Do Barrett students have to take classes with regular ASU students?</p>

<p><a href=“State Colleges Also Face Cuts in Ambitions - The New York Times”>State Colleges Also Face Cuts in Ambitions - The New York Times;

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<p>You know, barrons, I’m not a personal fan of ASU (3 family members have gone there so I feel I have some basis to evaluate) but it seems a little gratuituous to rain on gadad’s parade.</p>

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<p>Well, it does not come up very often here so I had to take my shots. Crow is basically running a higher ed Ponzi scheme IMHO. Keep increasing enrollment income while offering larger and fewer classes. Maintain a patina of respect with an honors college. I call it a reality check.</p>

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<p>*
Do Barrett students have to take classes with regular ASU students?*</p>

<p>Like most honors programs, students don’t take all their classes in honors. I think that Barrett students must take 12 honors classes (about 36 credits)…that’s about 3 a year. However, I don’t like where you’re going with that statement. It sounds like you’re suggesting that since most of the classes are with “regular students” that somehow the program isn’t good. </p>

<p>It’s a mistake to assume that those in the non-honors are somehow inadequate students. If I remember correctly, GaDad’s son will be an engineering student. His classmates (whether Barrett or not) are going to be good students. Students who can’t cut it in engineering tend to get weeded out rather quickly. I would imagine the same goes for many of the other majors that Barrett students are in.</p>

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<p>I never said they were inadeqaute students. More about bigger and bigger classes with fewer class choices. 4 engineering majors were recently cut.
Engineering–see section under Tempe campus cuts</p>

<p>[ASU</a> to cut programs, limit new students](<a href=“Help Center - The Arizona Republic”>Help Center - The Arizona Republic)</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Which four? The article actually says “The engineering school will reduce the number of departments from 10 to six”, which could mean combining related departments to reduce administrative overhead. The number of engineering majors at Tempe is currently nine for primary majors, sixteen if you include subdivisions like “Aerospace Engineering (Aeronautics)” versus “Aerospace Engineering (Astronautics)”.</p>

<p>[Undergraduate</a> Degrees | ASU Engineering](<a href=“Explore our programs | Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering | ASU”>Explore our programs | Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering | ASU)</p>

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<p>Gadad, the School of Music at ASU is fantastic. Great faculty and superlative facilities.
(And the practice rooms have windows!)</p>

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<p>*I never said they were inadeqaute students. *</p>

<p>Your first post was a slam and the ones that followed have had a similar tone. Anyone reading between the lines would come to the conclusion that you were slamming the school overall and therefore its students. I don’t know a whole bunch about the school, but it’s unkind to rain on GaDad’s parade about his productive visit there. </p>

<p>Since you seem to have some concerns, why not post them in a thoughtful manner…not drive-by hits. </p>

<p>*More about bigger and bigger classes with fewer class choices. *</p>

<p>First of all, many state schools (even the top ones) have some very large class sizes. My nephew has some very large class sizes at UCLA. However, typically the very large class sizes are those intro lecture classes…and once a student is well into his major, the class sizes shrink considerably. My older son (at a different school) often only had 18 kids or less in his upper division courses (which is one reason why those courses don’t need an honors version).</p>

<p>If there is an issue with the honors classes and non-honors getting larger, then post that in a helpful fashion. </p>

<p>From what I remember from briefly looking at the school a few years ago, I do think the honors classes were then smaller (now with 25 students), but maybe I’m not remembering correctly - and 25 kids isn’t a big deal. I don’t know what the average size of the non-honors classes are. Can’t really use the data from USNews since that’s distorted by including the honors classes. </p>

<p>4 engineering majors were recently cut.
Engineering–see section under Tempe campus cuts</p>

<p>here’s the actual passage:</p>

<p>*• Tempe campus: The engineering school will reduce the number of departments from 10 to six; the clinical-laboratory-sciences program will be closed; the W.P. Carey School’s sports-business-specialization MBA will not be offered after the 2009-10 academic year; and more than 30 other graduate-degree programs will be eliminated.
*</p>

<p>As others have said, it’s not clear whether actual majors/disciplines have been cut or if they’ve just been combined into other depts - which many schools do (such as EE & ECE). Can you name any specific engineering disciplines that have been eliminated and why?</p>

<p>Musica: *the School of Music at ASU is fantastic. Great faculty and superlative facilities.
(And the practice rooms have windows!) *</p>

<p>lol…are windows in practice rooms rare? I thought they were a given! :)</p>

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<p>VERY VERY rare. And when a musician spends 4-5 hours a day in the practice room, it makes an enormous difference.</p>

<p>ASU is enormous. And being enormous it has everything it’s supporters and detractors say it has. I would only recommend ASU to a student who is focused and driven. It’s definatly not for the aimless student who can easily get lost in the crowd. If your kid is focused on a particular goal,there are some great opportunities there. Besides the School of Music, the Archeology, Philosophy, and Architecture departments regularly land in top 10 or top 25 rankings.</p>

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<p>These postings are very thoughtful in exposing a fraud. I made no statement implied or otherwise about the students. I don’t get as caught up in that as some do here. Actually to me the students and their parents are the victims. I am exposing a flim-flam man and his academic Ponzi scheme. </p>

<p>Here’s a nugget from the COHE this week on ASU</p>

<p>"Tuition and academics aren’t usually the first things high-school seniors mention when they discuss potential reasons for going to a distant public college. They talk about meeting different types of people, or sports, or getting a good distance away from their parents.</p>

<p>Mr. Esdrelon, a senior at Archbishop Mitty High School in San Jose, liked the photos of Arizona State’s dorms and a video that showed professors sitting and talking with students. Arizona State has a competitive athletics program, he says, but it doesn’t seem like a typical university.</p>

<p>“My sister went to UCLA, and she didn’t meet a professor one-on-one ever,” Mr. Esdrelon said. “I want to be able to meet my professor, have them be able to help me if I’m struggling.”</p>

<p>Arizona State is one of the largest public colleges in the United States, with more than 70,000 students. Its student-to-faculty ratio is considerably worse than UCLA’s. Its success at branding itself as a more personal college experience reflects the quality of its pitch and the power of its four campuses, which are each positioned to attract different kinds of students."</p>

<p>So it’s really about “branding” and the pitch. Not so much about real quality.</p>

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<p>I think what would concern me most about Arizona State is that while the honors college may indeed be terrific, my observation of the out-of-state kids who wind up there is that they are, to put in kindly, not very academically talented and not very interested in applying themselves academically either. It sort of has a reputation for being a place where well-to-do families send their not-academically-inclined students who can’t get into their own state flagships to have some fun in the sun for four years. It may not be that way in Gadad’s neck of the woods, but I certainly think that’s a good chunk of its reputation here in my neck of the woods.</p>

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<p>PG, with the size of ASU, one can imagine that the student body will be quite diverse. The reasons to apply at ASU might be equally diverse. As an example (anecdotal, of course) students in Texas do indeed consider schools in other states. Some of the Texans happen to attend provate schools that do not rank. Accordingly, they are not offered automatic admissions under the top 10 percent rule (or 8 or 9 percent.) Other students might attend highly competitive schools and fall just below the automatic admission rank. For such students, schools such as Tulane and ASU (among others) become an attractive candidate in case the flagship do not come through. </p>

<p>Even if UT-Austin or TAMU “comes” through, the issue of merit scholarships available to OOS at Tulane or ASU might be a clincher. In addition, it is good to remember that the most sought-after colleges within UT do not offer direct or automatic admissions. In other words, if you are interested in the engineering or business school (especially the Business Honors Program) you might be in for quite a bit of nail-biting until the Spring. </p>

<p>It should be noted that the application process at ASU is extremely simple, especially for students with above average qualifications. Admission to the school, to the Honors Program, and scholarship offers come in without much delay. I cannot stress enough how important this kind of notice might be for a student to know he (or she) will attend A college, and a college his family can afford. For full disclosure, I was happy to be able to compare ASU to my own flagship institutions and weigh the Honors colleges as well as the financial aid and scholarships. It did make for a more serene Spring and end of March!</p>

<p>Fwiw, a few of my friends did end up spending “four years in the sun” and did well. Well enough to be admitted to prestigious schools for graduate studies, including into a very competitive PhD program at Cornell.</p>