Honors Program
“Being in the EMU honors program exposed me to professors and subjects I would not otherwise have explored. One honors course fascinated me so much I added another major!”
-Michelle Kennel
psychology and history majors
The Honors Program at EMU combines academic expectations, intellectual leadership, mentoring relationships and scholarship awards to assist students in achieving their fullest potential. Honors students will:
- develop skills in interactive communication
- display evidence of quality of thought and insight
- create self-awareness of particular learning styles and abilities
By graduation, each student should be able to articulate a personal worldview.
Program Components
Each academic year, EMU admits 12 incoming first-year students into its innovative honors program, which includes:
- Honors courses taught by EMU’s most accomplished faculty. These honors seminars invite collaboration and innovation and explore timely issues at an in-depth level beyond that found in typical university classes. (Students must take three honors seminars.)
- Honors gatherings: which are regular meetings of gifted and highly motivated learners, resulting in many opportunities to talk and network and just have fun.
- Mentoring: Each incoming student works closely with an upper-level honors student during the first semester on campus. Students also participate in a faculty/student mentoring relationship beginning the second semester.
- Worldview development: The honors experience culminates with the articulation of a personal worldview, honed by four years of scholarly, artistic and personal growth.
- Scholarships: Honors participants receive generous, renewable scholarships of full or half-tuition. Students must maintain an annual cumulative 3.5 grade point average (GPA) to continue in the honors program.
Requirements and Application
Basic Requirements:
- Minimum high school GPA of 3.5
- Minimum 1350 SAT (only critical reading and math sections) or 30 ACT
- Apply to EMU by November 1
In mid-November students are invited to apply to the program. They then have two months to submit the following:
1. 400-word and 100-word essays (details below)
2. An example of your academic efforts previously graded and evaluated with teacher comments
3. Resume indicating school, church and civic involvement
4. Two references
More detailed instructions will be mailed to all interested applicants, along with a final deadline for applications. The application culminates with a successful interview with a member of the honors faculty member during Honors Weekend, held annually in February. Candidates are notified by late February of their selection for the program. Honors scholarship recipients have until May 1 to respond.
Sample essay topics
400-word sample: In “Letters to a Young Poet”, Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the question now.” What question(s) are you living?
100-word sample: “What would you do if you were 10 times bolder?” Address this open-ended statement. Model your response after the “Life Is Short – Autobiography as Haiku” essays in the Sunday edition of the Washington Post.