Honors Programs

I mentioned honors programs in my last post. Let me elaborate here.

Valencia Community College offers the honors program to dual enrollment students. The student must contact Jackie Cole, the director of dual enrollment, to start the process. Eligibility is based on test scores and GPA. Please allow your STUDENT to do all of the college legwork as it is important that he or she gets used to the college environment. Dual enrolled students are considered adults at the community college and therefore must act as such.

UCF also has an honors program with the Burnett Honors College. A transfer student from a community college with an AA in the honors program can then get into the Burnett Honors College. The benefits of being in the honors program at UCF include priority registration, small classes, honors housing, scholarships and others.


Had I known about the honors college and what it entailed I would have really looked into it. A student at Valencia cannot register for an honors class without first being in the honors program.

If your community college in Florida is NOT Valencia, then please ASK about their honors program and your dual enrollment student. It certainly does not hurt to ask.

Honors Programs & Dual Enrollment

We've been extremely busy here so I have not posted in a while! My son graduated from the University of Central Florida on Saturday and then, of course, there was Mother's Day on Sunday! It is sad and exciting at the same time to have my "baby" graduate from college! Another chapter of motherhood is over and a new one can begin.


Another unschooled child has graduated from college with no stigma, no "gaps in education" and no problems whatsoever! A former friend was certain that I was doing the wrong thing by unschooling and not forcing the kids to "do work." Well here we are with both of them graduated from college with B.S. degrees (yes, go ahead and laugh, BS degrees!) and very good GPA's. My son is looking for work and planning on graduate school. He needs some more math to get into a top tier graduate school in economics so he's prepared to take a year to do it. However, if he finds a decent job before then, he will take that and postpone the grad school in favor of experience. What the heck, he has plenty of time!


I have learned quite a bit about the special advanced programs at UCF and will share these in the coming posts. As a homeschooling parent I just did not know about these programs and how to get my kids into them. I'm afraid that may cost my son a possibly good graduate school. Frankly, a lot depends on his GRE scores so we shall see. I need to do some legwork to see how homeschooled kids can get into some of these programs such as leadership and honors.


Recently Valencia Community College has allowed dual enrollment students into the honors program there. Of course it is expected that these students will stay after high school graduation and finish the AA degree with honors. This is a big deal! Many students did not take dual enrollment courses since they would not be part of an honors program, but now it is available to them! Please check the website for the requirements to get into the honors program and also speak to the director of dual enrollment, Jackie Cole.