Honors Programs: which are the best?
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Anonymous
PP. I wrote up my parent era experience at the link below. There are a bunch of other threads on DCUM if you Google or search internal to the site. https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1190405.page I think the reason the description of the Pitt honors program may feel "opaque" is that what you do with Honors College classes, thesis, B.Phil., etc. is very specific to the student. The more "pointy" and specialized the student's interests, the more they will get out of working with faculty and being mentored. If they treat getting access to resources, becoming a junior-level expert in a topic, or winning scholarships like a job, it will be much more clear what benefits can be obtained from an honors program and in retrospect what the impact of the honors degree was. There are great professors at Pitt regardless of honors course status or not. In many classes, the experience of the class is between the teacher and student and the other people in the class don't really add or detract. The professors teach what they plan - they don't speed up or dumb down classes based on the course audience. I treated college not as a job but as an education. I was not gunning for Rhodes/Marshall type scholarships and I did not want to write a thesis. But students who were involved in those pursuits received appropriate, directed counseling through the Pitt Honors College. |
Anonymous
I agree with you that it's not a perfect correlation, but there is definitely some correlation. I'll still bet that it's easier for a kid who is passionate about learning to find others like them in an honors college vs in a random sample of a huge state school population. |
Anonymous
| Are students in the Honors Programs all merry? My kid is interested in a honors program, but also wants to be in a Sorority and likes to be around a diverse group of people. Not students who are single minded about their classes. |
Anonymous
Nerdy. Sorry, phone autocorrected it. |
Anonymous
If your dd wants to be around a diverse group of people, I don’t think a sorority is the way to go. Sorry, but Greek organizations attract a fairly narrow profile. That’s totally fine, but it’s strange to say you want to join a sorority or fraternity to be around a diverse crowd. |
Anonymous
+1. The poster must not be from this area. In the DMV it’s not nerdy, it’s the norm, to be a striver who is high performing in multiple areas. |
Anonymous
PP with Pitt and PSU Honors experience. Also, my parents and my husband were Greek. When I went to Pitt and PSU, the sororities were housed on dorm floors (not stand-alone houses). The purpose of going Greek is definitely to find friends. It is a very group-oriented process. Frequent co-ed parties, often at fraternity houses, are fairly central to the experience. I do not like loud, drunken, crowded environments. Basically private equivalents of hanging out at a busy bar. I am a "restaurant with small group of people and good conversation" kind of person. I enjoy meeting new people but only where we can discuss common interests at a reasonable volume. I also had steady boyfriends one at a time during college so I was not looking widely for extra social opportunities. At Pitt and PSU, it's my impression that the honors college women were not involved in sororities. It's not so much a question of being nerdy as it is a question of priorities. It's my impression, which will probably be controversial, that the most academically talented women were not interested in going Greek. That said, sororities were more prominent at PSU and therefore probably more selective. Back to the main point of going Greek. Finding friends. I can see where the Honors dorms add value there. Too nerdy just depends on the individuals and the circumstances. In my specific experience at PSU long ago, that didn't work out because there weren't a lot of women in the honors dorm and I had a roommate with personal problems/mental health issues. So the community of honors women was too small to meet my social needs. I joined PSU choirs instead. |
Anonymous
Nerdy and sorority .... hmmm, what do you think? You really think sororities are diverse? They are definitely not single-minded about their classes. Maybe about their next party. |
Anonymous
Lol DD is in an honors program and on the executive board of her sorority. She’s the type that can make even a sorority “nerdy” I guess. And she’s POC. So in this respect the PP is right - you can be diverse in a sorority! |
Anonymous
Why target 'honors programs' at all? Why wouldn't she target the best College, with a greek system? |
Anonymous
I’m not the the PP you’re responding to but another PP who said sororities aren’t going to be diverse. But I wasn’t taking about race, I meant a more narrow interest and culture. I was not trying to knock Greek life, but just saying you don’t join the Greek system to increase the diversity of who you hang out with. Both honors colleges and Greek systems are selective so they’re by definition going to select certain types of people. Your kid just happens to fit both profiles so good for her! |
Anonymous
Thanks PP. I do agree that the sorority thing is more about conforming to fit into the sorority rather than expressing oneself and in that sense being diverse. The OP's kid could get diversity by doing Greek life plus a few other things. |
Anonymous
Because $200,000 over four years is real money to some people, even if it seems like chump change to you. |
Anonymous
Plus, peers in the honors classes and housing tend to be higher performing and achieving. All of the above impacts peer group and class discussion. |
Anonymous
Bingo. It's not like they have one regular English/physics/computer science class and then the "honors" version of each of those classes, as in high school. "Honors" classes usually just refer to the extra honors courses you have to take in addition to your regular coursework. It has nothing to do with your actual major. |