The Honors Program

Like Honors programs you'll find at other universities, we offer special Honors seminars and Honors sections of many undergraduate courses — about 120 Honors courses each year, in fact, drawn from more than thirty areas of study. We also offer the opportunity to write a senior Honors thesis in any undergraduate major. The Carolina difference begins with what you won't find as a part of our Honors experience. You won't find Honors students living in special dorms. You won't find Honors students taking a separate curriculum to which other students do not have access. You won't find a small cohort of Honors students who feel that they are the only students into ideas.

What you will find is an Honors Program that spearheads a university-wide commitment to providing as stimulating and enriching an academic environment as you can find on any college campus in America. You will find an exciting Honors curriculum that supplements Carolina's excellent general education program. You will find students joining the Honors Program when they first arrive on campus, others who join for their senior year, and still others who join sometime in between. You will find Honors Program students involved in every aspect of campus life. And you will find the Honors Program enlivening the intellectual climate of the campus at large through the University's unique James M. Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence.

In short, you will find what is probably the most inclusive and permeable Honors program in the country -- and, we think, one of the best. We're not alone. The Fiske Guide to Colleges reports that "Chapel Hill's honors program is nationally recognized as being one of the best and most accessible in the country" (p. 456). The first published guide to Honors programs at flagship state universities (Ivy League Programs at State School Prices, 1994) places UNC's Honors Program among only nine to be awarded a three-star rating (the highest given) in all categories of comparison.