To qualify for graduation with honors a student must have been a participant in the Honors Program and have completed 24 hours of Honors class credit, including participation in two, uniquely-provided seminars. The student will receive six credit hours of departmental course credit when completing the senior thesis. To be considered for admission to the Honors Program, either when first entering SHSU or as a continuing SHSU student, a student must make special application to the Honors Program Office. Incoming freshmen are eligible for consideration if they have a composite SAT1 score of 1200 or above, or a composite ACT score of 28 or above, or have graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class. For continuing or transfer students, eligibility is based upon a cumulative college GPA of 3.4 or better.
Admission is competitive, dependent upon the pool of applications received for any given year.
Once accepted into the Honors Program, a student must maintain a 3.25 overall grade point average while at Sam Houston State University in order to continue participation in the Honors Program. In an attempt to provide unique, broadly integrative, interdisciplinary educational experiences to students, a series of Honors Seminar classes has been established. These courses are expected to be highly interactive between professors and students and will generally involve student paper presentations. The courses are designed specifically for the Honors curriculum, but are open to enrollment by any member of the SHSU student body if space is available and with the consent of the Honors Program director. Key services range from acquisitions, cataloging, circulation and stack maintenance to reference, database searching, interlibrary loan, and instructional services.