Counselor Edition: Do You Have Honors Colleges On Your College List?
They are Personalized, Distinctive, and Open A Lot of Doors!
When he was in High School, Ian Cleary was looking for a college that had good science programs, good financial aid, was close to home, and potentially an Honors College Opportunity.
Ian found all that in Oakland University Honors College.
He got a really good scholarship - Presidential Scholarship which covered his tuition.
He had access to great advisors who helped him with a professional development plan.
In his Freshman year, he was in a class with about 100 other students in the Honors College.
He was able to build great friendships, learn a lot and discovered himself as a first semester freshman in college, which is something that can be difficult to do for a lot of students.
Ian Cleary is graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Sciences and plans to pursue Sports Medicine.
There are over 100 Honors Colleges in the US. Over the last few months, I had the privilege of talking to Deans and Directors from half-dozen Honors Colleges - about their flagship programs and opportunities for students.
Here are the Highlights:
It’s a Community!
Interprofessional Education
High Impact Practices - Encouraged and Supported
Access to Scholarships and Grants
Lots of Career Opportunities
1.It’s a Community!
Honors Colleges are part of a larger university with some very attractive characteristics:
Small - usually 5-10% of of the overall UG student body - diverse, across majors and disciplines;
Designated Mentors/advisors to guide students;
Opportunity for Mutual Exchange between faculty and students.
Here’s Niels Christensen Professor of Psychology and Director of the Radford University Honors College in Virginia.
“So we admit students coming straight out of high school. This past year, we had 120 1st time freshmen starting in the fall semester, and that was up a little bit from previous years. But we end up being somewhere between 5 and 10%, of the entering each entering class.
In terms of like the total number of honors students, it's a little bit over 300. And I like to think of that as human scale. And so I don't know everybody's name or everybody's face, but I know almost everybody's name or face, and often both. And so you get a sense of these are the people who know me, they recognize me, and you can have that sense of community.”
2.Interprofessional Education
Honors College courses tend to be cross disciplinary, contemporary, and open to input from faculty and students.
a) Weber Honors College awards a Minor in Interdisciplinary Studies.
Here is Dr. Stacey Sinclair is the Director of Weber Honors College at San Diego State University in San Diego, California.
“All the students in the [Weber] Honors College complete 16 units of honors classes, which are organized as a Minor. And this is something that is another point of pride for us. This is pretty unique.
So what that means is, you know, in addition to their major on their transcript, they're going to actually have this honors minor listed.
And that's powerful, because it's a way that students can stand out from their non honors peers. And it's also just a tangible, you know, kind of record of all of the kinds of extra work that they've done.
And the focus of our minor is on Interdisciplinary studies.”
b) A cross-disciplinary course that Ball State University Honors College
Here is Prof. John Emert, Professor of Mathematical Sciences and the Dean of the Ball State University Honors College in Indiana.
“A Colloquium that I taught last term was on in probability risk in gaming, and there I'm talking about casino kind of gaming.
And so we looked at how how risk and probability is perceived how we play off of those, those perceptions.
We also looked at the impact that perception of risk has to us as a society.
It, it brought together a dance performance major to social measures, and actuary. And each of them, not only did they bring something distinctive to the table, but they also left with a with a with a, with a fresh perspective of their own major.
I think about my dance performance major, who actually used some techniques from social science research that she picked up through that class, to examine what's known as chance dance, where it might be random, or it might be only perceived as being random.
Thinking that risk has different impacts for different segments of society. So that's what we do.”
3.High Impact Practices - Encouraged and Supported
You hear a lot about UG Research, Study Abroad, Co-op or Summer Opportunities. Honors Colleges have the infrastructure and process for students to experience them!
a) Summer Programs
Here is Niels Christensen, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Radford University Honors College sharing a couple of Summer Programs:
“The one that's most common for Radford honors students during the summer is the Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF). And so this is executed through the Office of Undergraduate Research here at Radford is program that is open to any students, but honors students tend to be very competitive for it.”
“Many [Radford] students will sort of start their Honors Capstone project with SURF where they're getting sort of paid to work on the research project over the summer with their faculty mentor, then they'll continue that project on through a senior year. Honors students are disproportionately represented in those service awards.”
“The other program that happens during the summer that is a mixture of study abroad, and research is the rare program. This is the Radford Amazonian Research Expedition (RARE), where students from Radford design research projects during the spring semester, they go down to the Peruvian Amazon, run those projects over the course of three weeks living in the jungle, and then they come back and present those in the fall semester. I think it's really an amazing program that the university offers. And again, it's disproportionately Honors students.”
b) Study Abroad
Here is Steve Engel, Professor and Dean of the Georgia Southern University Honors College in Statesboro, Georgia.
“We had a freshman seminar. Professor had an assignment. Everybody had to write a study abroad plan. You know, this is for freshmen. When are you going to study abroad? Where are you going to study abroad? How are you going to make sure it all happens.
An engineering student came up and said, I'm not going to study abroad, I'm not leaving this country. I'm going to do a co-op, and I want to write my paper on planning when and how I'm going to do the co op.
The professor said, that's great, you're going to do a co-op. You should do that. Do this assignment. Anyways, everybody's doing this assignment, write it up.
And he did.
The next year, he went on an alternative bike trip we had that went to Costa Rica. And after going to Costa Rica, it was a week long thing, you know, sort of getting his feet wet. And then he went to Costa Rica, and he said, you know, that was great. It was really powerful. They did a service project.
And he said, but you know, I really felt out of place because I couldn't speak the language. I took some Spanish and in high school, but not much. And you know, I really need to learn Spanish more.
And so the next summer he took a study abroad to Argentina and and that really got him immersion and develop his language further.
And then when he graduated, because he had Co Op and in fact, he did the study abroad and Co Op, as an engineering student was able to get Co-op that paid and so his graduation gift to himself was a trip to Australia!”
c) Field Trip
Here is Prof. John Emert, Professor of Mathematical Sciences and the Dean of the Ball State University Honors College in Indiana.
“So in a typical year, we'll have two or three courses that will have a field study or a study abroad element to them.
These might be a spring course for which the class studies the first half of the term about Ireland,
Then over spring, break the class hops on a plane, and actually studies Ireland for a week on site.
At the end of that, in that spring break, they come back.
And then the second half of the course is more the debriefing of of what did we what did we see? What did we experienced? What did we find? What were those unexpected discoveries?
We do about two or three of those every year.”
d) Thesis
Here is David Jenemann, Professor of English and the Dean of the University of Vermont Honors College in Burlington, Vermont.
“To graduate as an Honors College scholar, students do have to complete a thesis. But our, our philosophy of the thesis is that unlike when I was an undergraduate student, and a thesis was a pretty Proform, a 50, to 70 page essay, you wrote that maybe two people read and then went in the drawer for forever.
We really want a thesis to be appropriate to a student's major and appropriate to their discipline, as well as a project that they're excited about taking ownership of and seeing it through from from germ of an idea to completion.
Because while we have a lot of students who go on to graduate school and will do graduate level research, the idea that we want to convey with a thesis is that in having a project that you manage, and develop all the way through, you're also developing transferable skills that will be pertinent to any professional experience you have down the road.”
4.Access to Scholarships and Grants
College cost is an overriding factor in the choice of colleges. Honors Colleges may be a good place to research and identify scholarships and grants that may make it easier on your pocketbook.
a) Scholarships
Here is Graeme Harper, Dean of Oakland University Honors College, in Rochester, Michigan.
“So you've got a pretty straightforward system, people are awarded on the basis of their application to the institution. So they know what they're going to get directly from admissions pretty pretty quickly.
But the Honors, has additional scholarships on top of so you know, they may have a merit scholarship. And then they apply to the Honors College, there's a central application system here that goes to all units in the university. And if their honors college or future honors college students, we will get their applications.
We have scholarships, frankly, for everything from housing, to tuition, to travel to, you know, all manner of things, usually based either on need or on leadership and excellence generally, so one or the other. And sometimes both, but the criteria are pretty simple.
It's either going to be based on leadership roles, somebody's taken or the the amount they've been active in supporting other other people is often part of it. So if they've been, as I say, part of a school group, supporting the things at their school or in the community or in their church or something like that.
And then the other side is need, which of course, as I say, is not that uncommon, unfortunately. But occasionally people will have need and we have scholarships that are designed to help people with need as well.”
b) Research Grants
Here is David Jenemann, Professor of English and the Dean of the University of Vermont Honors College in Burlington, Vermont.
“Part of the Honors College is, is a university wide office called the fellowships opportunities and undergraduate research office. And that team who works with me, is there to support undergraduate research across campus.
And because so many of the Honors College students are doing that research, it made sense to situate it here in the Honors College. And they, they distribute about $400,000 a year in research funding for undergraduates.
And that funding takes a lot of different forms. So we have some students who need research materials and ranging from, you know, some of the software that they're using to run data analysis to a student who mistakenly had an order of mealworms. For some, for some, some animals he was working with deliver to our office to, you know, you know, material that they're using in in some of the art and design projects that they're doing.
So we certainly want to support the material needs of research. We also support students with travel grants to travel to where they're doing their research, as well as to conferences to present their research professionally.”
5. Lots of Career Opportunities
So, how do Honors College Graduates do? What kinds of opportunities do they get compared to those who did not go the Honors College route?
a) Oakland University Honors College
Here is Graeme Harper, Dean of Oakland University Honors College, in Rochester, Michigan.
Well, 95 to 97% of students that come to this Honors College and going to grad school, every commencement ceremony, that's the percentage that are likely heading to grad school. And the small percentage that doesn't go to grad school is usually heading into areas like engineering, for example, where they may join a company and then come back to a to a master's degree funded by the so that kind of thing.
As Fellow of the Royal Medical Society, I have a very deep interest in what happens in medical training and pre medicine, in particular, I'm interested in, I keep a pretty close eye on what's happening with students that want to go into the medical fields.
99%, which is a ridiculous number, it's close enough to be 100, that I may as well say 100, but 99% of them are getting into one of their top three choices of graduate school or med school. And that's incredible!
b) GSU Honors College
Here is Steve Engel, Professor and Dean of the Georgia Southern University Honors College in Statesboro, Georgia.
And so a huge percentage of our Honors College students go on for graduate study, or professional school, law school or med school, typically, that school in dental school as well.
And, you know, we did an alumni survey a few years ago, and it was three quarters of three quarters of our Honors alumni had gone on to further study in graduate school or professional school. And so that's it's very common, it's, it's anecdotally, that's less common among our general student body. You know, the, these are very motivated students and, of course, push forward in their careers.
c) Radford University Honors College
Here is Niels Christensen, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Radford University Honors College about opportunities :
I think one of the things that really distinguishes honors graduates from non honors graduates at Radford is the proportion of them who are going on to graduate and professional school. So our outcomes over the past five years, we have about 47%, just less than half are going to graduate school right after undergraduate. So that is a much larger proportion than the general student body.
We have students going to just a host of amazing programs do Cornell, Michigan State, Penn, Tennessee, Virginia Tech's Carilion Medical School, so a lot of very prominent outcomes for their graduate destinations.
In terms of going straight into the working world, half the students are doing that as well. They are very successful. I think compared to the general student body, they're probably a little bit more likely to go to more of those national corporations. We have students going to Accenture, Deloitte, Booz Allen, we have students who have been in ROTC and are going straight into service in the US Army. So those outcomes are very more of a national focus maybe than regional focus.
Suggestions for You
Hope you liked this piece about Honors Colleges.
If this has piqued your interest, then here’s what I suggest:
Research Honors Colleges.
Make a list of the ones you want to learn more.
For the ones you like
Dig deeper across the parameters I have laid out in my piece
Talk to folks in the Honors College Office
Reach out to Honors alumni and learn about their experiences.
Short List the ones you would like to consider applying to.
Share the list with your College Counselor to take it further.
Hope this is helpful. All the Best!
Finally, A Big Thank You to All for reading this Newsletter, and to all My Guests who have been generous with their time and counsel on my podcasts.
Have a Wonderful May!
Venkat