   Graduating with Honors - Is it worth it?
  Hello Community,A couple of days ago, I was invited to join the honors program at school. It seemed interesting, but I'm not sure whether it equates to perhaps a better job. I'm all up for doing it, except I won't be able to graduate in 4 years if I do(I'm double majoring in csci and math). Did you graduate with honors? If so, do you think it was worth it? Besides, I do things like volunteering and reading insightful/controversial material to broaden my mind anyway.Thanks for any guidance[smile]!Chad Seibert   
  If I remember correctly, this was required at my school in order to be eligible for the Summa Cum Laude distinction, which I got. It's definitely something you can use to pimp out your resume ;)Quote:Original post by Chad SeibertHello Community,A couple of days ago, I was invited to join the honors program at school. It seemed interesting, but I'm not sure whether it equates to perhaps a better job. I'm all up for doing it, except I won't be able to graduate in 4 years if I do(I'm double majoring in csci and math). Did you graduate with honors? If so, do you think it was worth it? Besides, I do things like volunteering and reading insightful/controversial material to broaden my mind anyway.Thanks for any guidance[smile]!Chad Seibert;  Assuming graduating in 4 years is not your top priority, I'd say go for it. Every honors program I've heard of at a university comes with some good perks besides the classes themselves. You're likely to get priority course enrollment, housing, and advisor attention among other things.   ;  I was in an honours program (although in Canada I'm pretty sure any 4 year program is considered honours, while a 3 year is not). I graduated with highest honours (which is essentially the equivalent of summa cum laude). I don't think either of those has much to do with your situation though.   ;  I graduated cum laude, which for my institution wasn't that big of a deal (I think you had to have at least a 3.5 GPA overall, I had 3.55). However, I was inducted into the Computer Science honor society, Upsilon Pi Epsilon, becoming the charter president of my institution's chapter, and THAT required at least a 3.7 GPA in-major, and 2 nominations from professors. I had 3.85, which would have been a 4.0 if one of my lame profs didn't try to "teach me a lesson" about assuming I knew what material a class would cover. In the end I answered all the questions on all of the tests correctly, even in regards to the material the class intended to teach, aced all of the projects, and was even tutoring other students in the class (two students claimed I was the only reason they passed the class), but got deducted points for contrived reasons (I didn't use the same variable name that the prof did in hand-written code snippet on the final), finishing the class with a B+ instead of an A, BAH!   ;  Well if you are thinking of applying for a government job you get hired at a higher entry level (GS levels they call them) promotion if you graduated with honors.Personally, if you think you will be sacraficing extracurricular activites I would avoid it since just about everyone I know that spend way too much time hitting the books in college and now have a PHD or decent job wish they would've had more fun in school. Then again if they did they probably wouldn't be where they are now and have the jobs they do?;  Hm, well time to think. Thanks for the advice!   ;  I graduated math+CS with an average grade of 83.8 without too much effort,  where in my university the excellence mark is average of 84+  (=15% of students and superb excellence at average of 91+ = 3% of students). This was a big disappointment for me because I had the 84+ all through the degree and faltered in the last two semesters. I considered adding a summer semester to repeat some courses and fixing my average to 84.01 but ended up getting married moving south and getting a job instead. The job where I joined had no interest in my average grade, I received a very high salary and I am very highly respected professionally. So I am not at all sorry and that missing excellence mark had no impact whatsoever on my career. Of course it is possible I am lucky and other workplace would have cared more.;  If it doesn't get you anything within two months of earning the distinction, it probably won't get you anything.  I graduated at the top of my class, which got me some gold cords as part of my outfit at commencement, and then it was promptly forgotten by everyone, including me.So yeah, if it gets you into a society or on a list or puts something on your resume/CV, then it's important.  Otherwise, not really.   ;  It's worth it if it's not a hinderance.  I did a few years on an honor's program, but after a while, the 21 credit semesters were getting to me.  I dropped back and did the rest at a normal pace, still graduated on time with a few extra credits and am doing quite well.My general advice is you can give it a try, but if it's overwhelming, then know when to slow down. [smile][Edited by - Rydinare on March 11, 2008 12:04:53 PM]