The LSA Honors Program is a four-year program that provides an especially rich and challenging set of academic offerings to talented and highly motivated students in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Through special courses, intensive faculty contact, and thoughtful advising, the Honors Program enables students to identify their intellectual interests and to pursue them as deeply and as far as they can. The approximately 500 students who will form the class entering Honors this year will come from a wide variety of backgrounds and will be interested in every field of study in the College, and they will share a love of learning and a desire to pursue the life of the mind.

As an Honors student, you will have the opportunity to take Honors courses from across LSA’s varied curriculum. Just what makes a course “Honors” depends on the content and the faculty member’s approach to a topic, but all Honors courses promise extensive student-faculty contact and intensive interaction with the best students at the University of Michigan. To find out more about Honors courses, Honors requirements and more, go to Academic Information.

Also, as an Honors student, you can apply to live in Honors Housing with other students who are just as passionate as you are about learning. You will also be part of the Honors community and share in a wide array of programs and opportunities that will enrich your Michigan experience.

Any student who has been admitted to the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts may apply to the Honors Program. Honors does search for students whose UM applications strongly indicate that they are well suited for our especially challenging and stimulating academic environment and invites these students to apply to the Program. Our initial screening of admissions data, however, can only tell us so much about a student's focus and engagement. If you are the kind of student who seeks out academic challenges and has a strong desire to be part of a vigorous intellectual community, you should apply to Honors whether we send you an invitation or not, so that we can fully consider how well the Honors Program would match your interests and goals.

We will closely evaluate your UM application along with a supplemental essay to help us determine whether you are the kind of student who might thrive in the Honors Program's rigorous academic environment. Please go to "2012 Honors Essay Prompts" to find this year's prompts and the directions for getting us your essay. While the Honors Program reserves the right to invite select students solely on the merits of their UM applications, we give first consideration to students who do write essays.

Honors evaluates the Honors essays and UM applications of students interested in the Program throughout the Admissions season, December-May. While we do have deadlines specified below, a student interested in Honors should send her/his essay to us as soon as possible. The sooner we receive your essay, the sooner we may be able to let you know that you have been accepted in the Program. Once we receive your essay, we will try to evaluate it and your UM application within three weeks. We will admit the strongest applicants early in the process while also determining early on that some students will not fit well in Honors, and we promptly inform these candidates about our decisions. In many cases, however, we need to defer our decision until we know what shape our incoming class will take.

We recommend that you apply to the University of Michigan and the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts early as possible. Once you are admitted to the UM and LSA, you are eligible to submit your Honors essay.

The best time for you to send us your Honors essay is just after you have been admitted into LSA so that we can let you know as soon as possible whether you can join the Honors Program. The dates below are the latest we should hear from you. Please know that the Program could fill before these deadlines.

While we urge you get your essay to us before early April, as long as we receive your essay by April 2, 2012, we promise to let you know our decision no later than April 24, 2012, a week before May 1st, when your enrollment deposit, confirming that you will attend the UM, is due.

If we receive your essay after April 2, 2012, but before April 18, 2012, we promise to let you know our decision no later than May 1, 2012, which is when your enrollment deposit, confirming that you will attend the UM, is due.

May 1, 2012: If we admit you into Honors on or prior to April 24th, you must confirm by May 1st that you plan to join the Program.

If you are admitted to LSA after April 15, we will accept your Honors essay and evaluate it along with your UM application only if there is space remaining in the Program, but we cannot guarantee that we will have a decision for you before May 1, 2012.

Questions? Contact us at honors.admissions@umich.edu

2012 Honors Essay Prompts