Requirements
The Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program is an invaluable educational
experience. Students engage with ideas, texts, and course material which come
to constitute a lasting intellectual foundation and framework. Honors students
may work in almost any field of their choosing or continue graduate research at
the highest levels. While pursuing our curriculum they have special opportunities to benefit
from many cultural activities in New York: important theater productions on
Broadway and elsewhere , concerts at the most important musical venues, visits
to the top art and historical museums of New York, and special lectures by
visiting scholars and artists. They also have the opportunity to participate in
special honors summer courses taking place overseas in which they move forward
in their programs and general education while getting to know interesting
places and cultures from all around the world.
In the first year of the program, honors students participate in specially
designated sections of the required courses that all Yeshiva College students
take during the first year to satisfy their writing requirements, First Year
Writing Honors (FYWH), and First Year Seminar Honors (FYSM). In those freshman
Honors sections, students are expected to develop intellectual sophistication
through intensive writing, research, and analysis.
Besides the first year writing courses, students choose at least six
additional honors electives from a variety of academic disciplines. These
courses may be in their specific majors or minors, courses with which they satisfy general education requirements of the
college, or elective courses to expand their interests.
Most students who are part of the program are supported by generous merit
scholarships. Those scholarships last for as many years as students are
enrolled and remain in good standing in the program. In order to do so,
students need to maintain an average GPA of 3.4 or higher, and take at
least TWO honors courses in each academic year (our summer honors courses
may be included among those courses). Simultaneously, each student must
maintain a comparable level of excellence in Judaic studies.
The culmination of the honors program is a senior honors thesis, in which a
student, over the course of several semesters develops an independent research
project and works directly with a faculty mentor. Details about the thesis
project’s scope, procedures, etc, may be found here. Honors theses explore a
broad range of topics in the sciences, humanities, social sciences, Judaic
studies and the arts, and in recent years, several have been devoted to
creative writing and musical performance. It is not uncommon for students to
present the fruits of their research at both academic conferences and in
published form in respected scholarly journals.
Overall, students must spend at least three full years and complete at
least 108 credits in residence.
Recommendations written for an honors student from administrators and
faculty members are virtually guaranteed to be exceptionally strong, and the
student's diploma specifically confirms his graduation both from the Jay and
Jeanie Schottenstein Honors Program and Yeshiva College.