UC-Davis: does anyone know about UC Davis honours programs?

[adam_smith]

Hello,
Do you guys know anything about UC Davis Integrated Studies Honors Program (ISHP) and about their Davis Honors Challange (DHC) program? Which is better? The ISHP's porgram looks a bit better in terms of courses, while the DHS has a lot of weird course descriptions that always include the names of pop stars...ha sanyone been in any of these programs?
Or is any one them any good? Is it worth it? I mean ins't it just better to take whatever courses you like?
Any word will be apprecaited!
Thank you,
adam_smith

[claudsinthesky]

I went to UC Davis for my first two years of undergrad and participated in the DHC for my freshman year (2005-2006). When I did it, I wasn't too impressed--I quit after that first year. But from what I hear, Integrated Studies is much better; at least more prestigious. You get in based off your SAT scores, HS GPA, etc. These are like the "probably should have gone to a better college" students. Or, at least that's the way I saw them.

But, at least for DHC, you have to take two discussion type classes and one seminar throughout the year. The weird course descriptions you are talking about are probably the seminars. There, you pretty much have a topic (sometimes about popstars and such), and you work on a presentation about that topic that will be given at a convocation toward the end of that particular quarter. The seminar group is made up of like 15 or so people, with a professor that supervises. The discussions, I felt, were actually the best part of DHC. I took the math 21 series discussions and it mainly consisted of the professor giving us "harder" calculus questions, the students doing them, then discussing it with the class. It's actually really nice in terms of interacting with the professor. But other than that, I felt like DHC was a waste of units (particularly the seminar) I could be using for more interesting classes. I know a lot of other people that felt the same way, and who planned on quitting too, but most people stayed in the program.

But DHC is improving--haha, I still get the e-mails of some of the things they're doing to improve. One thing they've recently added that is really impressive (and if you're going to be a freshman is really nice) is priority registration for classes. And getting all the good teachers is probably the best thing you could do for your GPA