What is the point of Honors?
What is the point of honors in college? In high school, it is understandable that people would want to take honors versions of classes because there exists a concept of weighted GPA. But in college, there is no such concept. How is then the honors version different than the regular version of a class other than the fact that the honors version is much harder and requires more work? What I am trying to get at is what is the overall benefit of taking honors classes? I’ve heard arguments saying that employers and graduate schools like to see a student who likes to challenge himself/herself by taking honors classes and I’m down with that. This is an acceptable explanation and I agree to some extent. However, what are the chances that you will get the same grade in the honors class compared to the grade you would have received had you been in the regular version of the class? Chances are that you might end up with a grade that is lower than the one you might have achieved in the regular version. Therefore, you are hurting your GPA. Now tell me this, what is the difference between a student who took regular classes and graduated with a 3.7 and a student who took all honors classes and graduated with a 2.7? That just says to me that the student who took the honors classes could not handle the workload and was overpressuring himself. In an ideal workplace, myself as an employer would not want to hire such an employee because I want my employees to be productive and not just make commitments that they cannot handle. Therefore, my conclusion is that take the honors version of a class only if you get the same grade you would receive in the regular version of the class. According to me, the probability of such a thing happening is very very scarce.
April 11th, 2003 at 7:44 pm
Yo Pranav, Nice argument ;). But here’s my 2 penny’s worth. Well, let us assume for the sake of argument that this is a valid premise(CMSC 250 ;)?); the premise being that you should not take honors courses if you want to get a good grade. Now, if everyone acts on this premise, then very few people (if any) would be taking honors courses. This would mean that soon, there wouldn’t be any honors classes… then all those really smart people who took those honors courses would come down to the regular version. And then my friend, it would be much tougher to get a good grade in the regular version of the course. So in conclusion, you should take honors courses if you want to save your grade… which is of course a contradiction because it goes against the original premise! The premise doesn’t hold…sorry buddy ;).