Honors Colleges?

[relatively prime]

I go to a no name state school... but I'm in the "Honors College" which has a lot of it's own courses and stuff. I was wondering if being in the Honors College made up at all for being at a no-name school.

At first I assumed it didn't matter much at all... I even forgot to mention it at times. But then I read somewhere that graduate schools view being in an Honors College as similar to being in a mid-tier private school. Have anyone read or heard anything about this? Does being in an Honors College really help?

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[Hallm_7]

I go to a small school too, and I'm in the Honors College there. I did it because I thought it would help, and I like the way the honors college is set up. I don't know how much it helps out, or even if it helps at all. But I do know it won't hurt you. And if it doesn't hurt, you might as well do it. If it increases my chances of getting into med school any at all, then I think it was well worth it.

 

[tatabox80]

Hey there,
I'm a member of the honors college too at my school. When you take the honors courses it shows up on your transcript and will look like you took an extra effort at your school. Plus if you do a thesis it will look even better!

 

[Mutterkuchen]

I personally doubt that being in the Honors College will help. Med Schools will probably just look at the school you went to for name recognition.

I am in the same boat, since I also went to No-Name State University. The honors courses I took were valuable to me from and education point of view, but no one is going to give a crap and I know that.

 

[none]

No, it won't make up for going to an unknown school. Further, I am of the opinion that it is better to have a high GPA than to have difficult coursework. Now if you can do both, that's great, but don't let these "honors colleges" harm your GPA. It's just not possible for every adcom to know the differences in every undergraduate school's curriculum, but they sure can tell the difference between a 3.5 and a 3.8.

 

[Jeffy]

i agree with tatabox, it'll help if you do a thesis.

 

[finney]

i went to a small no name school in the south. i was not a premed while i was there, but i was a chemistry major and was sort of watching on the side lines the whole medical school application/admissions chananagins. it was very frustrating to watch. every year our students only got in to the 2 state schools. anything you can do to develop your admissions packet will improve your chances of poping onto the radar of schools.

 

[efex101]

I also go to a no-name small liberal arts school, but the ongoing theme here is *only* to apply to a couple of schools. Most med students that gained acceptance from my school did not even bother applying to other schools but the state ones. Well hopefully this trend will be broken with some friends of mine who are applying this year to about 15-20 schools. I also get a feeling that many of the pre-meds here at my school really have no clue about the application process, MCAT timeline, volunteering, and other stuff that other pre-meds are aware of.

 

[Hallm_7]

I think that people are making too big of a deal about the name recognition of your school. I think someone who goes to a small school has just as good of a chance as someone who goes to a better known school. And it's a fact that med schools, law schools, and other such schools accept a higher precentage of applicants from small schools as compared to large state universities. I think the only schools that have an advantage over small universities are the Ivies, Duke, Vanderbilt, the UC's, Stanford, and other similar schools.

On your application maybe you should point out that you believe the small school you went to enabled you to have a better education and one-on-one interaction with the profs.

 

[efex101]

I really love my school of course the resources are not as abundant as a larger school but still the education is amazing. I also was accepted to awesome research fellowships two summers in a row without a problem, not that this will necessarily correlate with med school acceptance. I was the only person from my no-name school at these programs. The folks from the Yale program mentioned that not many folks from small schools apply to SURF summer program maybe because they feel that only those from ivyes have a chance. Anyways she mentioned that at least for her program there was no correlation between school attended and who got accepted. Hope this makes sense.

 

[Hallm_7]

I'm glad to hear that about the SURFs. I'm planning on applying to some this coming year. Where did you do your SURFs at?