My son was accepted on Friday … does anyone on this board know what criteria OSU uses to choose students for its University Honors program? Or how rare it is? OSU is such a giant school that I feel like without getting into Honors, my could get lost on the crowd, so to speak. If he got into the Honors program, he’d almost certainly attend the school.
My son’s stats are:
ACT: 33
wGPA: 4.19
class rank: 9/359
lots of activities, AP classes
Any idea of his chances for Honors?
I think your son has an excellent chance of getting admitted, assuming he did an adequate job on the Honors and Scholars Essay that was a supplement to he Common Application. They don’t publish the criteria, or at least I can’t locate it. Two years ago my son applied. He had about same gpa and lots of activities and Honors and AP courses, but “only” a 31 on the ACT. I believe his ACT was a little low. And he did not receive notice when most of others on CC heard in January. So he called the Honors Program office in February and reiterated his strong interest. The person took down his name and that may have made the difference as he heard a week later. He enjoys the honors program as he gets to register for classes before everybody else. Also, the class sizes are smaller and the faculty are the instructors. My only regret is he did not choose honors housing --he is in Fisher and could have applied for the business honors housing or global business honors housing (both of which required separate applications). But he wanted to live with non-honors students. Being in honors housing would have given him the benefit of the Scholar programs living and learning community experience, which i hear the students love, because they live and learn with peers who have similar interests. Ohio State has a lot of great scholars housing choices. And the dorms have programs for the scholars students. But one cannot be in both the scholars and honors programs. It’s one or the other, with the exception of the housing I mentioned above. Some students choose scholars and then after first semester apply for honors.
A belated thank you for this answer, trackmbe3!
Don’t worry about it. Even if he doesn’t get in directly to honors. If he were to receive a GPA of a 3.5 after his first semester he should be guaranteed entry. He’d need to maintain that GPA to be in the program long term, anyways.
As an aside, I started in Scholars, met the minimum GPA for honors after my first semester, and am now in both. Also, if you want the more ‘community’ feel, Scholars is by far the better choice. Honors is really just a status and better registration dates for classes. Scholars also has more separate dorms (also better/newer ones), and more events planned for the students. And as I have done, you can always participate in both.