Honors vs non-honors

[silver]

For a college bound kid, how important is it to take honors vs non-honors courses? I'm not talking about GPA weighting (although I guess that would factor into the decision slightly). More about the in-depth/challenge level of honors vs non-honors.

If you have a STEM kid, do they need honors humanities courses? If you have a humanities kid, do they need honors STEM courses? What if they're capable of those honors courses, but they really don't like them?

Does the answer change if the kid will be chasing merit aid?

If the kid starts out doing honors courses in a subject area, but asks to do less challenging/time consuming course, does it look bad to drop down to non-honors (for example, honors biology one year but non-honors chemistry the next)? In a situation like that, is it better to not label any of the courses in that sequence honors rather than have the drop in rigor? 

[EKS]

I didn't label anything honors in our homeschool (with the exception of outside classes that were labeled that way).  I did have a designation for classes that used "advanced" resources, meaning obviously college level materials.  It was just a code listed with the other codes.

[Lori D.]

Not directly an answer to your question, but "Honors" varies SO very widely from school to school, state to state, that may be a pretty meaningless designation for some colleges. If you do end up weighting, "Honors" is typically weighted less than AP and DE:

regular . . "Honors" . . AP / DE
A = 4.0 . . . 4.5 . . . . . .  5.0
B = 3.0 . . . 3.5 . . . . . .  4.0
C = 2.0 . . . 2.5 . . . . . .  3.0
D = 1.0 . . . 1.5 . . . . . .   2.0

[ScoutTN]

Might depend on how selective the colleges he’s considering are?

[silver]

20 minutes ago, ScoutTN said:

Might depend on how selective the colleges he’s considering are?

The oldest isn't currently looking at colleges that are too selective, but I have no idea about my middle child. Youngest is not yet in high school. I don't think any of them will be wanting highly rejective schools. It's probably less of a concern for admissions, and more for impact on potential merit aid.

[silver]

2 hours ago, EKS said:

I didn't label anything honors in our homeschool (with the exception of outside classes that were labeled that way).  I did have a designation for classes that used "advanced" resources, meaning obviously college level materials.  It was just a code listed with the other codes.

I've used some curricula that has called itself honors, and that's driving part of the question. 

[Farrar]

I took the same approach that EKS did. I didn't label anything honors and I made it clear that I didn't provide anything called "honors." But that much of the material was honors level.

You get the shape the narrative. You can go all in for designating "honors" or not. I do think if you offer "honors" then be careful because then you need to do it across the board.

I don't think this matters as much as some homeschoolers think. Mostly I think it's better to dial it back.

[silver]

8 hours ago, Farrar said:

You get the shape the narrative. You can go all in for designating "honors" or not. I do think if you offer "honors" then be careful because then you need to do it across the board.

So if, for example, my kid does AOPS for math, I shouldn't label it as honors unless I also provide honors level work for things like English and foreign languages? 

Does the same apply to AP? I'm comfortable teaching AP math and science, but I wouldn't be good at teaching, say APUSH. Does it look bad to have no AP humanities courses when there are AP STEM courses?

[8filltheheart]

I include honors labeling. I simply define it as advanced coursework compared to an avg high school course. Whether it helped, I have no idea. But based on my kids admissions results, it certainly never hurt.

[ScoutTN]

I only have one in college. She did APs or more advanced coursework in high interest areas, not in everything. At her not-seiective, public uni, test scores will  place a student out of the intro English courses and determine the largest portion of merit aid. The rest was major/department specific. 

Edited February 13 by ScoutTN

[JennyD]

11 hours ago, Farrar said:

I took the same approach that EKS did. I didn't label anything honors and I made it clear that I didn't provide anything called "honors." But that much of the material was honors level.

Same.  No honors designation (and I didn't weight grades) but I used the school profile and course descriptions to explain the level of coursework. 

[Farrar]

13 hours ago, silver said:

So if, for example, my kid does AOPS for math, I shouldn't label it as honors unless I also provide honors level work for things like English and foreign languages? 

Does the same apply to AP? I'm comfortable teaching AP math and science, but I wouldn't be good at teaching, say APUSH. Does it look bad to have no AP humanities courses when there are AP STEM courses?

I think it just helps to have a clear narrative about what you offered and why. What I've seen a few times that I think doesn't serve a student very well is that they took random courses as "honors" with sometimes a bunch one year and none the next. I think colleges don't know how to read it as telling a cohesive story. Did the kid increase their rigor? Lower it? It's messy. And it also begs the question for colleges - why did this school (you, you are a school) offer honors for these things and not those. And if it was available as honors, why not have the student take it. They want the student to take the maximum rigor available to the student. If you say, we didn't do AP courses because we have this other philosophy, then the kid can't be dinged for not having AP courses. If you say, we didn't label things honors and instead did high level work across the board, no ding. But if you have honors classes and the kid isn't taking them for everything, then that's a ding on the kid. 

I think it works to offer honors or AP or DE in one area and not another and then you explain it. We did AP sciences because they were at a high level but not AP humanities because we followed this classical approach. Or we did DE science because they offered in person labs, but not DE humanities because they weren't as rich as what we could do at home. Or we didn't have enough money to offer more than one AP course or more than two DE courses or whatever. 

Basically, make sure it's clear what the context is and make it make sense. If you do honors, make sure it's got a clear narrative in your profile.

 

[Roadrunner]

We didn’t label anything honors either. However, my DS had so many AP courses and DE courses that his transcript didn’t need any more boost. AP courses were supported by scores and DE was supported by outside grades. All courses taught at home and even Great Books by CLRC were “normal” on transcript for the sake of consistency. 

Edited February 14 by Roadrunner