Advantage: Advising

Honors offers personal advising for all students, beginning at New Student Orientation and continuing on through graduation.

During orientation, you’ll meet one-on-one multiple times with an Honors academic advisor, exploring your academic and career interests and matching them to your fall schedule. Honors Orientation introduces first-year students to the breadth and depth of LSA and Honors course offerings. You’ll finish orientation with a complete schedule and a better understanding of U-M systems, along with a few new friends. Students also attend Honors Kickoff, held at the start of the fall term, bringing together our incoming class, providing important programmatic and academic information, and helping students become familiar with the campus while meeting new people.

Our advisors continue to work individually with students over their academic journey, talking with them about their interests and goals and helping them map those onto a course schedule. The Junior Honors Award requirements include a required one-on-one meeting with an Honors advisor during your first year in the program, ensuring that our students connect with someone early on, building relationships and receiving valuable advice. Honors advisors also talk with students about their major and minor options as they progress forward. Additionally, the Honors Program offers some specialized advising services, focused on assisting students with pre-law and pre-health plans.

Later on in sophomore year, Honors students attend Honors Tipoff, which is designed to help students better understand the opportunities that await them in the upper-division Honors Program. Tipoff is a chance for students to hear more about the timeline, requirements, and benefits of continuing on in Honors. Underlying all the coursework in Honors is the firm belief that students should take learning outside the classroom and engage in an Honors Senior Thesis or an Honors in Engaged Liberal Arts (HELA) project–an independent study/ research project under the direction of a faculty member. This allows you to concentrate on an area of particular interest, to develop intellectual relationships with members of the faculty and research staff, and to make more informed decisions about your long-range goals. You are encouraged to look for research opportunities as soon as you feel ready.

All Honors students receive our weekly Honors newsletter about academic and community opportunities, This Week in Honors. Students can track their progress toward the Junior Honors Award via Suitable, which provides you easy access to check where you stand on your Honors-specific requirements. Current U-M students can make advising appointments online; our advisors offer in-person and virtual advising appointments. We recommend an appointment each semester in order to track your academic success and progress toward your degree.