<p>My son will be applying to UDel by Dec 1 as an engineering major. And so he recently reached out to a friend for advice, who applied to UDel Honors program as an engineering major last year. This friend got accepted, but after attending the honors orientation session, he decided it was not for him and ultimately went to Lehigh. He said he would have to take a bunch of extra classes including harder English, which he felt would be of no benefit to him or his major. </p>
<p>My son feels the same way and is now resisting applying to the honors program, although he is still applying to UDel. He feels the benefits of better housing and priority registration are outweighed by having to take the harder English and extra "non-relevant to Engineering" honors classes. Can someone explain the pros and cons of the honors program while in college, and post-graduation? What are the real benefits? How much extra work and difficulty is it for someone who hates English classes and will be majoring in Engineering? Does graduating from the honors program help you get into better graduate schools and/or look good on your job search resume? Or are all the benefits just while at UDel?</p>
<p>Also, we are OOS so are hoping for good merit aid. Will not applying to honors program hurt his chance for better merit aid?</p>
<p>Any advice is greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>I don’t think not applying to honors will have any impact on scholarship consideration. My D is in honors and loves it. There are fun activities, all sorts of opportunities, and the priority registration is huge. There are honors sections of classes that are smaller and have more attention. It’s nice. It’s not earth shattering. A student would have just as good an experience in or out of honors. The only benefits my daughter finds totally worthwhile is the housing (simply because her upperclass honors housing is right next to her department and her job. She is a lazy girl.) and priority registration. That’s a biggie. My only thought for you is that since many of the engineering kids are in honors, not being in could be a problem because they would all register ahead of him and be in line for internships and honors sections that wouldn’t be available to him.</p>
<p>Can you explain how the priority registration works. At some schools it’s just for honors classes, at some schools, you register ahead of non-honors classmates, at some schools honors freshman register ahead of non-honors seniors. </p>
<p>How does it work at Delaware?</p>
<p>You get an earlier registration date within your year.</p>
<p>I agree that for DD the advising and early registration were the biggest benefits and well worth considering. She never found the Honors sections to be too taxing but benefited from them being smaller.
Unlike some other schools, there is no minimum award associated with Honors (or at least there wasn’t).</p>
<p>I’m not sure what the problem is. Apply for the honors program and if your son decides it is not for him after the first year I guess then drop out. Like many things it is easier to get out of a program many times than to try to get in later.</p>
<p>And busybeemom, tell your son that even engineers need to be good writers.</p>
<p>I think he should definitely apply for the Honors program. The English class is not that bad, and they seemed to have interesting topics to choose from when my son was looking (he ended up waiting for the spring to take it because they had offered one based on sports books in previous years and he wanted to see if they offered it again (they did). The colloquium wasn’t bad, and they took a field trip to Philly. The Honors office has had free ice cream recently.</p>
<p>Plus I would think that prospective employers will notice when your resume says you are in the UD Honors Program. Other than a little extra work, I don’t see the down side.</p>