<p>Next quarter I'm taking. </p>
<p>Linear algebra honors
philosophy honors (with a writing focus)
creative minds
mandarin</p>
<p>which sums up to 19 credit hours. I'm thinking about adding engineering statistics(5 credit hours), but I'm not sure how much better this will look for med-schools. The reason that I want to take the class is because it is a honors class. And it won't be offered during spring. </p>
<p>Also, if anyone knows, how difficult is 24 credit hours?(quarter system btw) I've taken 21 before and ended up with mostly A's. But I was exhausted on a daily basis though.</p>
<p>
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how difficult
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</p>
<p>Depends mostly on you and how smart you are. If 21 was exhausting, 24's probably not a good idea.</p>
<p>Yeah I was thinking about that, but that honors credit does seem irresistible.
But do honors carry weight for med school? Most people that make it to med-school don't have honors credit. But I haven't seen evidence that honors has a significant positive effect. I think I could pull a 4.0. Last time, I didn't manage my time well. That why I said I got mostly A's( I got 1 B+).</p>
<p>would med school adcoms care if an applicant took honors courses (ie honors genchem) vs. an applicant who took all of the basic intro courses from the start?</p>
<p>they dont care about the classes you take, as long as u fulfill the pre-med requirments</p>
<p>I don't know. Although I don't have hard evidence. I still strongly suspect( I'm not exactly positive so thats why I asked in the first place) that honors might make a difference. With med-school admissions as competition as it is, anything that can put you in a positive light will most likely give you more consideration. </p>
<p>If anything else, it should make you different from all the other cookie-cutter applicants.</p>
<p>Med schools don't care about honors because many schools (especially the top schools) don't offer honors courses. The typical course at an Ivy League school is essentially equivalent to a honors course at a state college.</p>
<p>Besides which, honors classes are often easier, not harder.</p>
<p>"Besides which, honors classes are often easier, not harder."</p>
<p>That is very counterintuitive. How are they easier? The honors courses I took gave me a bunch of projects in addition to the regular coursework. And usually the teachers that offer honors are usually the hard ones.</p>
<p>Because everything is about the curve.</p>
<p>Not always about the curve...</p>
<p>Whenever I took honors sections of classes, they were always easier, but this was because they were often smaller, and had better professors, and occasionally were simply more flexible with grades than the non-honors sections. </p>
<p>The best example is my Honors Cell Structure and Function course. I took it honors and the prof was AWESOME (one of my favorites during undergrad), while the non-honors prof was foreign and hard to understand.</p>
<p>In the Honors section, we had four 100 point exams plus the final. You had to take 4 out of 5 exams during the semester but only the top 3 scores counted in the final grade, and the final replaced your lowest exam grade (but if you took the final, you had to use its score). </p>
<p>The non-honors course...the final represented 50% of the final grade, as much as the three exams taken during the semester combined.</p>
<p>Finally the Honors Program required honors sections to do "special projects" but ours was simply reading Finding Darwin's God and having class discussions on it once every 2 weeks. Occasionally, our TA would make these outside our recitation periods (which was annoying), but if he did, it would be at a coffee shop or something and he'd buy.</p>
<p>Cool, I'll just have to take honors courses all the way throughout undergrad. </p>
<p>Btw, you guys have confirmed my suspicion, albeit indirectly, that honors gives students that take them an advantage. Just because its easier lol.</p>
<p>I think it's definitely great to take honors courses. Just don't expect a direct advantage to be given to you by adcom members.</p>
<p>co-sign on NCG's statement. </p>
<p>Also, realize that at most schools, honors sections simply aren't offered for most classes. Upper level courses in most majors simply don't have sufficient numbers to warrant two sections, let alone one of which is honors (and thus unavailable to at least some students). My school's Honors Program got around this by allowing you to "contract" honors credit with the professor of the course you were taking. This did require extra work and gave none of the benefits I mentioned in my example since you were taking the exact same class as everyone else AND had to do an extra project for your honors credit. In this situation, since there was no direct benefit (from getting a better course) and no indirect benefit (from getting an advantage in med school admissions), the costs clearly outweighed the benefits and taking honors is probably a bad decision. The only reason people "contracted" is because they were required to have a certain number of honors credits in order to stay in the program.</p>