This year, the Honors College achieved 20 years as an academic unit at Baylor. With 1500 students pursuing dozens of academic majors and pre-professional programs around the university, the Honors College has grown into an extraordinary community of accomplishment, friendship, and vision, all in service to Baylor’s Christian mission. As this year comes to a close, we wanted you to know some of our key facts and figures as we launch into our next season of academic life.
Although the Honors College was established in 2002, honors education at Baylor goes all the way back to 1959.The Honors College is big! Around 1500 students are connected to the Honors College through one or more of our programs. Taken by itself, the Honors College looks something like the one of the nation's premiere liberal arts colleges.Baylor's Honors College has around 40 full-time faculty lines and robust staff support, making us one of the largest and best supported honors colleges in the United States.Another 100 or so faculty from around the University are, at any one time, directly engaged in supporting students' honors education, either by teaching our courses, offering honors sections of courses in their departments, leading honors colloquium, or directing theses.Honors students can pursue any of the University's 125 undergraduate majors in 9 different undergraduate colleges and schools.At any given time, around 400 Honors College students are designated as pre-med. They achieve higher MCAT scores and better medical school acceptance rates than non-honors students of similar aptitude.Year in and year out, around 200 Honors College students are pursuing BBA degrees within Hankamer School of Business. The emphasis within the Honors College is not upon more difficult coursework, but upon but academically richer, better quality, and more enjoyable work.Prospective students who apply and are accepted to the Honors College matriculate at double the rate of other students.Students who live in the Honors Residential College have higher retention rates, higher GPAs, better graduation rates, and higher self-reported satisfaction with their education.The Honors College has a significant presence of humanities faculty. However, within our faculty we also have a geneticist and cancer researcher, a medical doctor, a screenwriter and film producer, and a specialist in global migration.Students in the Honors College are awarded $1 million in additional aid from endowed scholarship funds created by donors who have generously invested in honors education at Baylor.
