Honors Program
The Honors Program at Hastings College—designed for those who are committed to academic excellence, intellectual curiosity, and civic and global engagement—is a way to stand out and step up.
With select honors courses and seminars, you’ll appreciate smaller class sizes, international travel during your junior year, additional mentoring and advising from an Honors Program advisor (in addition to your regular major advisor), service opportunities, off-campus activities, priority class registration and an honors designation on your transcript.
The bottom line? You’ll have more freedom to choose the courses you want across all academic disciplines and create an individualized interdisciplinary emphasis area (IDEA) outside your major and minor to prepare you for your Honors capstone project. By tailoring your learning to match your interests and ambitions, the Honors Program will help you develop and explore as you get ready to start your career or apply to graduate school.
Application Requirements
Admission to the Honors Program is highly competitive and the number of positions limited. The selection committee looks for well-rounded students with a combination (though not necessarily all) of the following criteria:
- Content and rigor of recent coursework
- Current GPA of 3.6 on a 4.0 scale
- Outstanding talent/achievement in at least one activity or discipline
- Strong commitment to one or more of the following: leadership, social activism, community service, global engagement, scholarly inquiry
- History of taking initiative (a self-starter)
- Good fit with the mission of the Honors Program
The inquiry-based nature of the Honors Program requires us to make an admission decision based on the evidence you present—so while being a high achiever in terms of grades and test scores is important, the committee also looks for students who are self-motivated, engaged and committed to learning.
Note that you must apply and be accepted to Hastings College before applying to the Honors Program.
Application Process
After being accepted to Hastings College, incoming students can complete the Honors application online, uploading the materials noted below.
Applications for the Hastings College Honors Program are accepted August 15 through May 1 each year.
Here’s what you’ll need to complete the application form:
- A letter of recommendation from a recent teacher or counselor (.pdf or Word doc)
- An application essay written with proper grammar and a relatively formal tone (400-500 words). The prompt: Hastings College intends to graduate creative, curious and caring students who contribute as citizens of their local and global communities. How will you embody the mission of Hastings College and what do you hope to gain by being a member of the Honor Program learning community?
After you submit your application, a member of the Honors Program Admission Committee will get in touch to arrange an interview.
Interviews for acceptance into the program will be scheduled on an individual basis and may be face-to-face or mediated.
To see just some of the activities Honors Program students are involved in, check out their page, facebook.com/hchonorsprogram.
Questions?
For more information, contact your admissions counselor or the Hastings College Admissions Office at 402.461.7315 or hcadmissions@hastings.edu.
The Hastings College Honors Program is a member of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC). Founded in 1966, NCHC is a unique educational organization designed to support and promote undergraduate honors education. NCHC has nearly 900 member institutions and several hundred individual members, impacting more than 330,000 honors students.
