Check out your honors program.

[Sesom]

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I was looking at honors courses at University of Utah. I have previously come across posts on here regarding someone asking if taking Honors courses helps with your application into med school. A lot of the responses were that these courses were more difficult and that it is not worth it because you might lower your GPA. I was looking at the FAQ for my university and it says that these courses are not accelerated. My university requires you have about a 3.5 GPA to apply for it. These courses all consist of professors with Phd and the classes are taught directly by the professor instead of a TA. The classes also have no more then 30 students each and usually less then 20 according to them. Also, honors students are given the opportunity for research and work closely with a teacher in their major. The univsersity reccomends this for people trying to get into grad , law or med school. I thought that this was interesting and decided to post it here to encourage others to check out their honors programs at their school 🙂 .

 

[justinbaily]

That sounds like every class I've ever taken after Freshman year at my university.

 

[metallica81788]

Honors programs usually give you other advantages, but almost none of them come from the actual classes or the "prestige of an honors class" - I used my Honors program for first scheduling privileges.

 

[justinbaily]

That would be the major advantage of being in the honors program of a university. My school's honors program requires students to take a a lot of classes that they otherwise wouldn't. The lack of scheduling autonomy killed it for me.

 

[metallica81788]

That would be the major advantage of being in the honors program of a university. My school's honors program requires students to take a a lot of classes that they otherwise wouldn't. The lack of scheduling autonomy killed it for me.

Exactly. It was almost impossible to do Honors as a science major, because they wanted me to take so many humanities classes that it became impossible and I couldn't take the classes I wanted to.

I used it for 6 semesters of early scheduling and only had to take 1 Honors class for 4 semesters. Once I ran out of science Honors classes, I dropped.

 

[Sesom]

Here the honors students get the research opportunities.

 

[ThaliaNox]

At my school the honor's program was a pain in the behind. I went to a relatively small school, and there were only a few honors courses offered per semester, and they were almost all in the liberal arts. I never would have gotten everything scheduled to get out on time if I'd been in the honors program. I had enough trouble with the only offerings for two required upper level sciences overlapping! They also made you take two full years of a foreign language, and who really has time for four extra classes that don't count towards graduating?

 

[dazedanconfused]

How is the grading like in honors programs? Is it harder with a bigger curve, or just harder or how is it?I am debating whether or not to apply for mine, and grading would be a big pro/con for entering mine.

 

[ThaliaNox]

How is the grading like in honors programs? Is it harder with a bigger curve, or just harder or how is it?I am debating whether or not to apply for mine, and grading would be a big pro/con for entering mine.

It's going to depend on the school. Pointless to ask this here.

 

[dazedanconfused]

It's going to depend on the school. Pointless to ask this here.

thanks for the advice I'll just ask the advisor. Although, I was just looking for generalizations nothing specific.

 

[thesauce]

At my school, the profs of honors courses were allowed to give more A's, often to the entire class. They would also let students take incomplete grades and turn in their final exams and papers at their leisure the next semester so they wouldn't interfere with finals for other classes. Then they'd convert their incompletes to A's.

So it's not all bad...

 

[CapnCrunch]

I was fine with the program until recently. For some reason, my university decided to charge an additional $250 per semester for being an honors student. I will most likely avoid graduating with honors solely because of this...

 

[lorenzomicron]

Is that honors? That's what every class and major at my college is like. So since it's nothing special, it probably won't help with medical school, apart from the fact that the classes have higher quality and the environment more conducive to learning.

 

[Vassili Zaitsev]

A 3.8 in an easy major or at least one you somewhat enjoy will destroy a 3.2 in an honors program. Not worth it.

 

[Wheee]

just found out you can't get phi beta kappa here without being in honors. doesn't matter if you beat their gpas...you can, however, still graduate with honors if your gpa is good enough. tell me how that works!

 

[Sesom]

A 3.8 in an easy major or at least one you somewhat enjoy will destroy a 3.2 in an honors program. Not worth it.

Point of my post was to encourage people who read general statements like this to not disregard their school's honors program. My school specifically states that they like to see this for med school applicants. It also specifically states the courses are not accelerated.

 

[Narmerguy]

One of the schools I applied to even had a special dorm for Honor's students 😱

 

[SabC]

I also used it for scheduling priority, and because it was advised for transfer.

The classes (at my school) were not accelerated or harder, just additional work, two papers due instead of one, additional presentations/projects, etc.

 

[JoshUNCW]

At my school, the profs of honors courses were allowed to give more A's, often to the entire class. They would also let students take incomplete grades and turn in their final exams and papers at their leisure the next semester so they wouldn't interfere with finals for other classes. Then they'd convert their incompletes to A's.

So it's not all bad...

That sounds less like honors and more like slackers haha. Not to sound rude... but seriously?

 

[zeppelinpage4]

The program at at my school will reduce tuition a bit and offer priority during registration. It's probably comparable to doing an english minor with some additional humanities courses. Seems like it's worth the extra work, not in terms of medical school but overall it comes with some good benefits.

 

[thesauce]

That sounds less like honors and more like slackers haha. Not to sound rude... but seriously?

Yeah, it's a joke. Honors students actually get a boost to their GPA because profs won't give anything less than an A- (<3.5 in the honors college puts you on probationary status). They don't have to worry about finals on top of that.

 

[shishka32]

My Honors program is pretty sweet. All classes are small and whatnot, but the professors really are better. There are no required GERs (just the Honors courses, which still include humanities and English and all that med schools want), so graduation is still the same amount of credits. The classes may be a little bit harder but it depends completely on the professor. My English class was literally one 20 page paper that we spent every single class working on. With only 15 students in that class, I really cranked out an awesome paper (and who couldn't). My Honors psychology class is just four exams, a couple presentations, and some peer-reviewed publication reading. Harder than the regular intro to psych class? Maybe, but I preferred it over being lectured to every lecture hour.

And yes, we have an Honors only dorm. Kind of ridiculous - best decision ever not to stay there this year.

 

[Hifey]

the honors program at my school was similar in difficulty to the regular version of classes except they had to take more classes and write a thesis. I took an honors class my freshman year but it wasn't exceptionally hard or anything. I thought about joining the program, but it wasn't worth the thesis and extra classes. They do get earlier enrollment but I had so many units, it didn't matter anyways.

 

[FlowRate]

Honors program here is a mix of harder and easier classes. I like it for priority registration. It's also the only way to graduate magna/summa/cum laude or whatever.