Honors Program Admissions Requirements
Admissions into the honors program is dependent less on GPA or test scores and more on a desire to devote oneself to a deep educational experience. The honors program seeks students with a voracious appetite for learning—an innate curiosity that crosses disciplinary boundaries and that finds in all academic fields signposts pointing toward God’s goodness, beauty, and truth.
Requirements
Recommended GPA and test scores are listed below, but all students are encouraged to apply.
- GPA: High School GPA of 3.5 or higher
- Test Scores: At least one of the following:
- SAT – 1250 or higher
- ACT – 28 or higher
- CLT – 83 or higher
*Covid-19 Test Optional Policy: Applicants for admittance in 2022 may submit test scores for purposes of application evaluation, scholarship eligibility, and academic advising. Due to limited testing availability during the Covid-19 pandemic, applications will be evaluated without submissions of test scores. However, admitted students who seek qualifications to the invitational President’s Scholarship Competition may submit entrance tests for consideration although not required.
To be considered for the honors program, students must complete the Honors Supplemental Application as part of their application to Northwest.
Honors Program Application
You can complete the honors program application from your Northwest University User Account. The honors program application contains the following pieces:
- High school GPA and optional Test Scores (will be cross-referenced with Admissions Application).
- 300-word essay on one of the following prompts for your reflection. The entrance essay for the Northwest University Honors Program also serves as the application for the President’s Scholarship Competition:
- Some of the best types of education occur outside the walls of the traditional classroom. Please select a life lesson that you learned—profound or simple—and detail how you picked it up and who helped serve as an instructor. (Our only stipulation is that you avoid any missions trip-related accounts, as our evaluators have read many such narratives that tend to advance predictable themes.) Please be creative and tell a memorable story along with relating your lesson.
- The African American novelist Zora Neale Hurston once observed: “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” As you reflect on your senior year in high school (or running start), do you consider it more a year of questions or a year of answers? Explain and include examples. If it was a year of questions, what were they and whom did you ask—God, the important people in your life, or your own heart? How do you live in the tension of unanswered questions? If it was a year of answers, how did the answers arrive? What were the questions? How did you live with the tension of those questions?
*If you do not meet the requirements but are confident that you belong in the honors program, we encourage you to still apply. Include an explanation of why your scores or GPA are lower than required and give us a chance to be impressed by you as a person.
To submit your general Northwest University application: