Minimum requirements for undertaking an honors project in AnSo:

1) College GPA of 3.2 or higher

2) Departmental GPA of 3.5 or higher

3) Strong interest in pursuing a Ph.D.

4) Advanced preparation during junior year (see below)

“Should I do an Honors project?”

The decision to undertake College Honors is often the result of a desire for the experience of doing independent research. However, since the AnSo Dept has an independent research project built in to the major, in the form of the 398-399 sequence, this aspect of the Honors experience is already largely being met by anyone majoring in the department. 

A further issue to consider is the nature of the typical research project in anthropology or sociology. Unlike laboratory research, for example, where students can sometimes "plug into" an existing research project of their professor, research in anthropology/sociology is more likely to be a truly independent project—one conceived by you and largely conducted by you alone.  Further, unlike the quantitative projects favored in many of the other social sciences (and in some other departments of sociology and anthropology as well)—where students are able to make use of data sets that have been collected by someone else, or can rely on statistical analyses of survey results for their projects—our department specializes in qualitative research, with an ethnographic component highly recommended.  Since most students come to the AnSo major with little or no prior experience in this type of research, the time and practice needed to learn to do it well are difficult to come by before the senior year. And yet a proposal for College Honors should be prepared during the spring term of the junior year.

Therefore, an AnSo major wishing to do College Honors should plan well in advance. The methods course, AnSo 301, should be taken in the fall of the junior year, especially if any data gathering is planned for the summer before your senior year. It is also advisable to take an independent study spring term of your junior year with the professor who would be supervising your honors project where you can begin to explore the relevant literature on the topic. Given all these difficulties, in addition to the required overall college GPA of 3.2 (as listed in the college catalog), we ask that AnSo majors have a departmental GPA of 3.5 or higher.

Because of the difficulty in meeting all of these requirements, we urge all AnSo majors to consider carefully before undertaking College Honors. In most cases, a rigorous senior project conducted in the course of the regular AnSo 398/399 sequence will be more than sufficient preparation for any subsequent research experience you might have in graduate school, professional training, or on the job.