Reply to Honors Programs: which are the best?

Forum Index » College and University Discussion

Reply to "Honors Programs: which are the best?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]How about UPitt Honors College?[/quote]I'd love to hear about some first-hand experience with this one. John Willingham is a fan and the BPhil seems quite rigorous for an undergraduate program, but many aspects of the program seem either overly flexible or kind of opaque from the outside.[/quote]

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.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics