Students in the honors program at Texas A&M University now have to meet a new set of requirements to remain in the program, and now all freshman honors students are assigned to the honors learning community.

But the program also offers more flexibility now, allowing students to contract for honors credit in a broader range of classes.

TAMU honors housing received a high evaluation in our recent book, A Review of Fifty Public University Honors Programs.  So it’s not a burden for all freshmen to live in the honors community.  They begin their freshman year there, and now, with a separate honors application in place, they can receive better advising and more readily get the classes they need through the priority registration available to them.

“The transition from high school to college has been pleasant because of all of the people I met in the program [who] help me with whatever I need. It’s a nice sense of family that we have going on here. I have a lot of friends who are having a hard time adjusting to college because they feel very alone, but I haven’t faced that problem because of the Honors functions and living with the people in my classes,” said Deanna Sessions, freshman electrical engineering major.

In addition to the housing change, students must now meet the following minimum continuation requirements:

• Maintain a 3.5 cumulative GPR and a 3.25 in Honors course work
• Make progress toward distinction requirements by taking at least 6 hours of Honors course work each academic year
• Participate in the HFLC (freshmen) or at least one HSC event per semester (continuing students)
• Update an e-Portfolio and meeting with an advisor at least once per year
• Plan and execute a capstone experience in their junior or senior year that synthesizes and integrates their educational experiences in the form of a research or scholarly project

Please note that the 6-hour credit requirement per year is a minimum to remain in good standing, while the actual completion requirement to graduate as an honors fellow is at least 27 hours of coursework and and 3-hour capstone project.  Honors students may of course also earn Latin honors, requiring at least a cumulative university-wide GPA of 3.5 for cum laude status.

The minimum requirements to apply to the program remain the same: at least a 1250 SAT, with both verbal and math scores of at least 570.