You Belong in Honors
All students are encouraged to apply for the Honors Program, which is meant to serve as an accessible and worthwhile enhancement to your education at USD. The Honors Program seeks students who are curious about the world and desire to think more deeply during their college experience.
Why Join Honors?
There are many unique components and opportunities that curate the experience of the Honors Program. Here are a few...
Team-Taught Classes
Experience interdisciplinary courses taught by two professors from different disciplines, a unique experience only offered in Honors
Mentored Research
Students have the opportunity to work 1-on-1 with a faculty member of their choice through the Honors Thesis
Priority Registration
You'll be able to have priority registration to help you better plan for your academic future
Small, Dynamic Classes
Engage in rich conversations and dive deeper into your Honors classes with like-minded students who value curiosity
Access to the Honors Lounge
Gain access to a lounge and study space reserved only for Honors students
Application Information
- Incoming First-Year Students
- Current USD students
- Transfer Students
High school seniors who have been accepted to the University of San Diego are eligible to apply in the spring prior to entering USD. Interested students should contact honors@sandiego.edu as soon as they are accepted to USD to request the application. Applications to the Honors Program are reviewed on a rolling basis during the application period, so it is important to submit an application soon after receiving USD acceptance.
The priority deadline for applicants to the USD Honors Program is March 20, 2026 by 12:00 p.m. PT.
All decisions are typically made by early April. Students who are not accepted, as well as those who miss the deadline, will have the opportunity to apply to the Honors Program in the fall of their first year at USD.
Application Tips
The Honors Program application was created to get a unique sense of who you are as an individual. It helps us, as much as possible, to assess the qualities we look for in honors students: curiosity, creativity, engagement, self-motivation, self-awareness, tolerance, care for others and a love for learning. See below for our tips on how to craft an application that showcases your individuality.
Only submit the application after thoroughly reviewing what is involved in being an Honors student and asking yourself why you want to be in the program. The Honors Program is expressly for students who want a deeper educational experience and who are willing to work more and harder to get it. Students who are interested and able to take a few classes outside of their major/minor and the core are best suited, given the interdisciplinary requirements for the program.
Avoid redundancy across your responses to the prompts. We created each prompt to potentially learn different things about you and your interest in the honors experience. Organized responses are best for all of the prompts; stream-of-consciousness or disorganized ponderings are not.
We recommend you pick one main idea/story/argument and follow through with that coherently. The relevance of your essay to the prompt should be evident. If you repurpose old essays to fit the prompt, it is usually very apparent.
Look over the website, talk to current honors students and faculty who teach honors courses, and aim to get a sense of what components are especially meaningful to you. Avoid generic or broad comments when possible. Tie a few specifics of the program to you as a unique individual.
Just talk to us. Please do not read a script or create a montage of footage of any sort. Instead, think of what you want to say ahead of time, jot down a few keywords, and imagine we are all sitting together having a conversation. Bring energy to your video! How you carry yourself in your video speaks to us about your enthusiasm for joining the program.
Ask a USD faculty member who you feel has seen enough of your academic performance to offer an evaluation of you. Your academic performance includes things like your participation in class discussions, your written work, your critical thinking skills, your performance on tests and assignments, your engagement in office hours, etc. [Please note: We understand that you may only have been at USD a short while and may not know any faculty extremely well just yet.]
See Yourself In an Honors Team-Taught Course
Honors students benefit from an enriching interdisciplinary curriculum cultivated in small and interactive classes. Browse recent team-taught courses faculty have designed and offered to students in the Honors Program.
Using an interdisciplinary approach, this course examines the national experiences of China and India, two emerging global powers, from the perspectives of History and Political Sciences. With a focus on the intertwined themes of colonialism and nationalism, the course analyzes the two countries' policies during the Cold War, their current economic development and their positions on regional and international security. Concurrently, the course dissects the bilateral relations between China and India as well as their complex relations with the United States and the rest of the world.
| HNRS 352 | Yi Sun | HIST | This section satisfies upper-division elective credit in the History major/minor. It also satisfies Core Advanced Integration (CINT) and Historical Inquiry (EHSI). |
| HNRS 353 | Vidya Nadkarni | POLS | This section satisfies upper-division elective credit in the POLS major/minor. It also satisfies Core Advanced Integration (CINT) and Social/Behavioral Inquiry (ESBI). |
Offered Spring 2021
People throughout the world experience conflict in both their interpersonal and business relationships. Ever wonder how to handle it? Honors Conflict Diagnosis and Dispute Resolution in a Global Environment is a course intended to help you develop the skills and knowledge needed to diagnosis, manage, and resolve conflict in a global environment. This interdisciplinary course (international relations/law/management/ethics) utilizes in-class role playing and simulations to help the student experience conflict in a cross-cultural context, as well as learn how to manage conflict in a global environment.
| HNRS 368 | Linda Barkacs | ETLW | This section satisfies upper-division elective credit in the Business Admin. major/minor. It also satisfies Core Advanced Integration (CINT). |
| HNRS 369 | Craig Barkacs | MGMT | This section satisfies upper-division elective credit in the Business Admin. major/minor. It also satisfies Core Advanced Integration (CINT). |
Offered Spring 2021
This course examines representative films from East Asia--Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Japan and South Korea in particular--in their national, regional and global contexts. While studying these films within the specific contexts of their historical, social, and economic conditions, we will place special emphasis on how various film texts respond both aesthetically and politically to a broad range of issues pertaining to nation, globalization, identity formations (race, gender, sexuality and class), authorship, new media, and (post)humanism, among others.
| HNRS 366 | Mei Yang | CHIN | This section satisfies upper-division elective credit in the Chinese major/minor. It also satisfies Core Advanced Integration (CINT) and Literary Inquiry (ELTI). |
| HNRS 367 | Koonyong Kim | ENGL | This section satisfies upper-division elective credit in the English major/minor. It also satisfies Core Advanced Integration (CINT) and Literary Inquiry (ELTI). |
Offered Spring 2021
Dying, death, and grief are universal human experiences. However, the dying process is not equal, and who and how we are allowed to grieve is influenced by religious, political, and social realities. This course challenges students to think about how we die and raises questions about social justice. We will explore issues such as, the AIDS crisis in the 80s, crack and opioid addiction, high rates of incarceration in the black community, police brutality, disability rights and death with dignity laws, and indigenous practices. We will consider multiple modes of communicating, including rituals, music, poetry, and film. Students will use theories, concepts, and research methods from Theology & Religious Studies and Communication Studies to interrogate these issues, and apply and integrate what they have learned.
| HNRS 380 | Jillian Tullis | COMM | This section satisfies upper-division elective credit in the Communication Studies major/minor. It also satisfies Core Advanced Integration (CINT) and Global Diversity Level 2 (FDG2). |
| HNRS 381 | Karma Lekshe Tsomo | THRS | This section satisfies upper-division elective credit in the Theology and Religious Studies major/minor. It also satisfies Core Advanced Integration (CINT), Global Diversity Level 2 (FDG2) and Theological and Religious Inquiry (FTRI). |
Offered Spring 2021
What is the meaning of my life and what does the meaning of my life mean for the society in which I live? How does one discern such meaning and what are the obstacles (personal and social) to coming to grasp that meaning for oneself? How do the answers to such questions change assuming either a theistic or atheistic premise? To what does an atheistic or theistic premise committee me, actually? In an intense dialogue with some of the most important philosophical, literary, and theist texts in existentialism, we will explore these questions in Theistic and Atheistic Existentialism.
| HNRS 324 | Rico Monge | THRS | This section satisfies upper-division elective credit in the Theology and Religious Studies major/minor. It also satisfies Core Advanced Integration (CINT) and Theological and Religious Inquiry (FTRI). |
| HNRS 325 | Michael Kelly | PHIL | This section satisfies upper-division elective credit in the Philosophy major/minor. It also satisfies Core Advanced Integration (CINT) and Philosophical Inquiry (FPHI). |
Offered Spring 2021