Honors Students FAQ

No. Taking Honors courses outside of your major can be useful to display versatility in your interests. However, if you’re planning to transfer into a specific major at university, it’s a good idea to complete some Honors coursework in the required classes for that major.

Remember that your instructors have to take the time to personally meet and mentor you. If an instructor declines to work with you, it may be because they have other obligations to fulfill.

If an instructor is not Honors Certified (i.e. they do not have an Embedded Honors Course), the best approach is to email the professor, express your interest in working with them, write a brief statement about how the Honors Program works, and propose an idea of what you want to work on and how it connects to the material that they teach in the course.

If it is early in the semester and you really want to complete an Honors class in a specific subject, you may consider dropping the class and enrolling with a different instructor. Before doing this, it is essential to ask your new instructor if they are willing to enroll you in their class and work with you on Honors coursework. The Honors Program Canvas page has a list of Honors certified instructors in different subjects that are interested in working with Honors students.

Note: you can only turn your course into Honors if the official instructor of that course is agreeing to mentor you. You CANNOT have another faculty mentor you if the faculty is not the official instructor for the class you are enrolled in. 

The application for the UC transfer agreements opens in the fall semester of each school year. The agreement with these universities is that you have to complete 5 Honors Courses by the time you graduate. You do not have to have all 5 of them completed by the time you apply, but you should be on track to complete them by the spring semester before you transfer. That is why it's important to sign up for Honors courses in the beginning of the term, so that there are records of you being on track.

Yes, it is possible to complete 5 Honors courses in one year. This usually means having 3 Honors courses in the fall and 2 Honors courses in the spring. Note that doing more than 2 Honors courses in a single semester is difficult, and you still have to earn a B or higher in your Honors courses to get an Honors designation on your transcript.

It can also be difficult to find professors who are willing to work with you for each semester, so make sure to email them about a week before the semester starts to see if they will mentor you and plan accordingly.

The Honors Transfer Program is the actual program that you must be a member of in order to take Honors courses. If a student wishes to join the program they must apply using this form and join the Honors Program Canvas. 

The Honors Club is an extension of the Honors Program that allows students to meet with other Honors students to talk about their projects and how to transfer to top universities.

It is not mandatory to attend club meetings if you are part of the Honors Program, and it is not necessary to be an Honors student if you want to attend the meetings.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to turn a short-term/late start course into Honors with a contract. The term is too short to develop a project of your own, that is the reason contrarcts are due in the beginning of the term. 

However, it is possible to have an Honors course for late start classes if your instructor has an Honors embedded component for the late start class, because the component means the instructor already has a plan for you. With an embedded course, due dates for any assignments will be decided by your instructor and you won’t have to submit a contract to the Honors Program Coordinator. 

Yes, you can do Honors work with another Honors student. However, you would have to double the output for it to be accepted. For example, you would have to write a 24-page research paper instead of a 12-page research paper if you are working together on the same topic.