Obviously doing the whole thesis defense and defense thereof will be a long and difficult process. However, I can't really seem to find anything about the relative difficulty of honors courses to regular ones (e.g. CHEM 0110 v. CHEM 0710). Also, how many of these classes does one take?
Thanks!
Posted Jun 1, 2015, 1:04 AM UTC
Ideally you'd be thinking more about the WHY you want a B. Phil as opposed to the how. If you are thinking that way I assume you are looking towards research and graduate school, which in STEM a B. Phil vs a BS doesn't really matter.
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I only knew one person that did a B Phil, you don't need to be doing one to do undergraduate research. Also, you won't be doing graduate style research as an undergrad simply because you don't have the background. What you would want is to work for a professor that would promise you a first author publication by the time you graduate as if you go elsewhere there is nothing saying your new advisor would even care
This is all correct. In the engineering school, I can't think of a single person I know that also completed a B Phil, as many of the programs have B Phil-esque requirements (my undergrad required two theses to graduate, an individual one and a group one). The more important thing for grad school in STEM is to be conducting work with a professor who can give you appropriate experience and insight, and ideally have you published or at least sent to a conference or two, before you graduate. That will look more impressive to potential graduate schools than a B Phil.
Granted I took chem 7 years ago, but honors gen chem wasn't bad. We used a different textbook (by Siska, who taught our class for about a month before he took sick leave and sadly passed away later that year) and there was a heavier emphasis on quantum mechanics at the beginning. Not sure how the class has evolved since then, but it was extremely doable.
Honors organic chem, on the other hand, was horrible. I did regular Orgo 1 and did so well that the professor suggested I do honors orgo 2. Big mistake. Orgo 2 sucks on its own, going faster and more in depth just made it worse.
We used a different textbook (by Siska, who taught our class for about a month before he took sick leave and sadly passed away later that year)
Oh hey. I was in that class with you when they replaced Siska with Saxena and we all got royally fucked by his grading scale the day before finals started.
We had a really nice Chem Prof take over for the spring honors chem 2 class (can't remember his name right now and it looks like he may have retired since then) and it was a lot more manageable, even with the lab added in.
Pratt! He was great. Saxena was pretty good until the mess with the grades.
Yes! Pratt was super nice! The effect of Saxena could be seen though, we went from 120+ students in the fall to 48 students in the spring. Talk about retention problems!
I took Honors Physics, Honors Chem and Honors Programming (Engineering) and honestly from the sounds of it all of the UHC classes were better (if sometimes more time consuming wrt homework) than the non-honors version. I know in particular regular Physics used to have this online-submission based homework that would frequently tell you your correct answer was wrong because you didn't format it correctly (i.e. you put in 0.5 instead of 1/2 or whatever).
The UHC Chem Prof is entirely different now, but because I had taken AP Chem in highschool I decided to take the UHC version instead of the regular so that I would repeat topics. Like u/pantherluna said, our class was pretty heavy on quantum in the beginning (a LOT Of Shroedinger stuff) but by UHC Chem 2 we hit more familiar material (Energy curves, gas laws, and then a bit of organic at the end which sucked).
Honors Programming was super easy IMO (I took it with Budny, not sure if he still is the only teacher for it) but the ability to finish up class in one term and then work on a project for second term was really nice and an easy way to start putting things on my resume for the summer.
You don't HAVE to take honors classes for the B. Phil. The whole "course" thing for the B. Phil is super super vague.. you kind of just have to show that your course plans through the next few years matches the B. Phil you want to do.
95% of the work is doing the actual research, writing, etc. It's hella difficult. It looks good. But I'd say that the main reason to do it is to see how much you can devote yourself to one specific topic- if you can do it, grad school may be for you! If not, that's totally okay.
Thanks!
Oh, and I can't speak for chem, but I did take honors physics. It was hard or whatever, but so is engineering physics. The grading I honors sounded easier based on talking to my roommate- so, the content may have been deeper and stuff, but the grade makes them even I'd say.