Honours Degree

[Guest Poster]

I'm currently considering an honours degree, but i'm worried about getting very poor marks.

 

I was wondering What the real difference is between honours courses and regular courses? Do honours courses go more in depth? or are the courses just more challenging?

[Guest Liana]

In general, an honours degree is simply a four year degree. The difference between an honours degree and a general degree, at most Canadian schools, is just that they require you to take more courses, generally including at least 2 or more full year 4th level courses. Unlike what others may tell you, I've found that 4th year courses are some of the easiest I've taken. Perhaps not easy with respect to the difficulty of the course, but they tend to a lot more enjoyable than first or second year courses and more about critically thinking about the course material rather than just memorizing things. Most fourth year courses require you to do a lot of thinking for yourself, whether it be in the form of term papers, presentations, or questions on the exams that go beyond just regurgitation of what was taught in class.

 

An honours degree should not result in lower grades. The first three years of your program should consist of almost the same courses as with a general degree, so the only place your marks might differ would be with the fourth year courses. I've found that fourth year courses do tend to be harder to get those really high marks in, but a lot easier to do decently. Second year, on the other hand, is often the "weeder" year, where the courses have insane amounts of work and deal with tedious materials.

 

The final point is that if you choose to do a 3 year degree, you are somewhat limited in the majors you can enrol in. At Guelph, for instance, you couldn't major in Biochem, or Biomed, or Microbiology or anything; you could only do a degree in "Biological Sciences", "Physical Sciences", or "General Studies".

 

Sure the honours degree sounds intimidating, but it's essentially just a general degree with an extra year tacked on. Probably 97% of the students you see on any university campus at any time are Honours students, regardless of the quality of their efforts as students.

[Guest Poster]

Thanks a lot for your input, but are you sure about that 97% of people are honours students thing?

 

Is that JUST in Ontario? Because I recall someone saying something about it easier to get an honours degree in Ontario than it is to get one in lets say BC.

 

In Ontario, you just complete the standard 5 FULL-courses per year to get an Hon. B.Sc. But in BC, i'm pretty sure that most "HONOURS" degrees require more than the standard courseload.

[Guest Liana]

Sorry,

 

I should perhaps have written that 97% of students are getting a 4 year degree (versus a 3 year one), which again is only an approximation given the fact that I've only ever met one person who was completing a 3 year degree. As for 4 year honours vs 4 year general, I'm not sure because there is no distinction at my school, but I would assume that most students are completing the general degree. Again, check with students taking programs that are offered in both formats, or check with the university itself. I imagine that most schools would have a common first year (and sometimes even a second year) between the two programs, with the difference occurring in the type of courses you take in 3rd & 4th year, but I don't attend a school that offers this option, so I'm not the best source on this. Obviously, this will vary from school to school, and possibly even program to program, so your best source is probably someone at the school of interest (ie, a program counsellor for the major you are interested in).

 

Sorry for the confusion, but I hope that helps to straighten up things.

[Guest Liana]

For clarification in response to your original posting, I would say that the honours program differs from the general 4 year program in its emphasis on the academic vs. applied aspects of the degree. So if you plan on entering either strictly clinical medicine or else directly entering the workforce after your degree (or else doing a further degree in a non-academic science area, like business) then you don't need to take the honours degree unless you really really like research. If, however, you are interested in academic medicine, or think you might do graduate work in the sciences if you don't get accepted to medicine right away, then look into the honours degree.

 

Being able to gain positive experience from challenging situations (eg, developing your ability to deal with stress, and actively pursuing challenges rather than running away from them) will help you out better in a career in medicine than having obtained high marks in undergrad.

[Guest arbitrage]

Honours at UBC is either extra credits beyond the baseline 120 over 4 years, or in some programs like physiology you have to write a research paper, or in my program which was Commerce all you had to have was 80% or greater average in your last 2 years and you got the nice looking line "with honours" added onto your diploma and transcript. (Man that was an easy honours to get!!)

[Guest YongQ]

Yes, at UBC for most (if not all) science honours, it's 132 credits, which includes an honours thesis (a 4th year research project that works like a grad thesis, except the emphasis is not really on results/publishable data, but more on process).

[Guest Poster]

Cudos to everyone for helping me out!

 

But do you guys think that it's a better idea to get an honours degree? For the purpose of a backup plan into grad school, if I don't get into meds.

[Guest Kirsteen]

Hi Poster,

 

Do you have some flexibility in choosing whether to obtain a 3-year versus an Honours, e.g., being able to return to your university to "upgrade" if you wish? Some programs favour certain degrees and some do not. For example, to enter the MBA program, degree-wise they "only" required a 3-year. I don't know if all schools will allow you to do so, but here's what I did in nutshell: 1) got the 3-year B.Sc.; 2) completed the MBA (from a different school than the B.Sc.); 3) went back to the original school to "upgrade" to an Honours (which did not pose any administrative/bureaucratic problem at all). The upgrading is primarily to allow for work towards a higher degree in research both, within the context of an MD/PhD and as a back-up plan in case entry to med school is not in the cards this year.

 

Do you have any other reasons for not completing an Honours degree? If so, I'm sure you'll be factoring those reasons into the equation when making your decision, in addition to questioning whether or not you'd really dig research, etc.

 

Cheers,

Kirsteen

[Guest Poster]

I'm planning on going to UBC, which doesn't offer ANY 3-year degrees, but I was wondering if ANY med schools would penalize you for finishing a 4-year BSc in 3 years?

 

Thanks!