University Park, Pa. - Widely regarded as one of the finest honors colleges in American higher education, Penn State's Schreyer Honors College is again garnering national recognition. Reader's Digest, in its May issue, has named the college to its list of "America's 100 Best," a comprehensive list of the nation's extraordinary people, places, innovations and adventures.
As Reader's Digest notes, the Schreyer Honors College "offers an Ivy League-style education minus the sticker shock. With average SAT scores as high as Dartmouth's, for example, 1,800 students study with top professors, in mostly small classes." In fact, a comparison of SAT scores for the middle 50 percent of incoming students to the honors college, places the college second among all Ivy League institutions, trailing only Harvard and Princeton.
Founded in 1997, the Schreyer Honors College has quickly become a national model for honors education. The college stands out among its peers due to its strong, four-year interdisciplinary community as well as student research and leadership accomplishments. Honors students have earned multiple prestigious awards, including: Marshall, Truman and Churchill Scholarships; an NIH-Cambridge Fellowship; and multiple Fulbright Grants, Goldwater Scholarships and NSF Fellowships.
In addition to expansive research opportunities, the honors college provides its students with a true global perspective. Of those who enter the program as first-year students, more than one-third participates in at least one international study, research, internship or service experience.
The college's sterling reputation among its peers can be seen through the advanced education opportunities afforded its students. On average, 85 percent of honors college alumni pursue higher education at graduate and professional schools within three years following graduation. They are admitted to the finest graduate and professional schools in the country. Since the inception of honors education at Penn State, all first-year-entering scholars applying to law, medical and veterinary school have been accepted.
Honors education at Penn State dates to the mid-1970s and the Penn State Scholars program. That program gave way to the University Scholars Program and eventually the Schreyer Honors College. Established through a $30 million gift from William A. and Joan Schreyer, the honors college expanded the mission of honors education at Penn State from simply recruiting excellent students and providing them with enriched learning opportunities, to a comprehensive program that prepares students to make an important difference in the world.
The college is also charged to assist in course development and innovations in partnership with the Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning, and promotes a global perspective and leadership development across the Penn State community.
For more information about the Schreyer Honors College, please visit http://www.shc.psu.edu online. The Reader's Digest story can be found online at http://www.rd.com/content/openContent.do?contentId=14809