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A program designed for you, an individual full of WONDER.

Application Checklist


The Honor Scholar Program explores the connections across disciplines and encourages your curiosity about a wide range of topics. Our faculty are currently considering applications for Fall 2024 admission.

1 – COMPLETE AND SUBMIT AN APPLICATION TO DEPAUW UNIVERSITY. Before you can apply to the Honor Scholar Program, you must first apply and be admitted to DePauw University.  Access to the application for the interdisciplinary Honors Program will be available once you receive your enrollment offer from the University. 

2 – COMPOSE YOUR ESSAY RESPONSE.  Choose, think about, and respond to one prompt in an essay of about 500 words. This is a soft word limit. Craft your best response, and don't feel constrained by essay length.

3 – FINALIZE AND SUBMIT YOUR APPLICATION.  Login using the same credentials as your application status portal to upload your essay application. The Honors Faculty are evaluating applicants through two admission rounds, with due dates on December 15, 2023 and February 15, 2024.  Should you have questions about the program or application process, please reach out to Amy Welch at awelch@depauw.edu.


BEFORE YOU BEGIN YOUR ESSAY...

Like the Honor Scholar Program itself, these essays address a variety of topics and represent different kinds of opportunities for thought. The topics may touch on sensitive issues; they may challenge you to think in ways to which you are not accustomed. Because creativity and analytical ability are part of the essence of our program, we think that you will find these essays both challenging and rewarding to consider and write about.

Read all the prompts carefully, think about them, and then choose one for your essay. Remember—there are no right answers here—think of this challenge as an opportunity for you to explore interesting issues and build a case for your point of view. The Honor Scholar Program takes the essays seriously, and we worked hard to generate questions at once diverse and engaging.

Because the Honor Scholar program also takes you and your ideas very seriously—both now and after you arrive—at least two faculty members will carefully read your essay. You should be aware that the essay and the interview that may follow are the most important factors in admission for the Honor Scholar Program. The Honor Scholar Program does not simply look at your test scores and GPA to gauge admission. We believe that the intellectual curiosity, engagement, and interest we want in our students manifest more clearly in written work (the essay) and personal interaction (the interview) than in SAT or ACT scores. So, take the essay seriously and use this opportunity to show us what you can do!

YOUR ESSAY RESPONSE.
  Choosing one prompt below, respond in an essay of about 500 words. Remember, this is a soft word limit.  

  • Please double space your text and include your name and mailing address at the top of your essay.
  • Save and title your response as your last name, first name (e.g., Einstein, Albert) in either a Word or PDF file. 

Prompt Option 1: Books outside a flooded home, New Orleans 

What does this image say to you?  You may take any approach or perspective you like in responding to the photograph.  That is, you could tell a story based on the photo, look at it as a piece of art, or comment on the economic, political, social, or environmental meanings it might convey.

Books outside a flooded house in New Orleans
Photograph by Chris Jordan,In Katrina’s Wake. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006 (posted with permission of author).

PROMPT OPTION 2: Health, Responsibility, and Community

 Public health scientist Thomas Oliver wrote in 2006:

“[p]ublic health commonly involves governmental action to produce outcomes— injury and disease prevention or health promotion—that individuals are unlikely or unable to produce by themselves...[a] political community stresses a shared bond among members: organized society safeguards the common goods of health, welfare, and security, while members subordinate themselves to the welfare of the community as a whole. Public health can be achieved only through collective action, not through individual endeavor.” 

 This perspective may be widely accepted in public health, but it “runs counter to a fundamental emphasis on property rights, economic individualism, and competition in American political culture” as Oliver observes.

Considering recent global health crises such as COVID, Ebola, Zika, obesity, and others that threaten us, what should the role of government or international organizations be in the regulation and promotion of individual and/or the public’s health? 

Reference:  Oliver, T. (2006). Annual Review of Public Health27, 195-233. doi: 10.1146/annurev.publhealth.25.101802.123126

PROMPT OPTION 3: I contain Multitudes

 According to Islamic law, traditional Muslim values, and common understanding, alcohol is prohibited in Islam. Yet, in a recent book, Shahab Ahmed begins by juxtaposing the two thought pieces indented below: the first comes from Walt Whitman’s poem, “Song of Myself”; the second is an anecdote about Muslim cultural practice.

Read both and discuss what you think Ahmed is trying to communicate by bringing these insights together.

         Do I contradict myself?
         Very well, then, I contradict myself.
         (I am large, I contain multitudes).
                                                   ----Walt Whitman

          Some years ago, …I witnessed a revealing exchange between an eminent 
          European philosopher…and a Muslim scholar….The Muslim colleague was 
          indulging in a glass of wine. Evidently troubled by this, the distinguished don 
          eventually asked “Do you consider yourself a Muslim?” “Yes,” came the reply.  
          “How come, then, you are drinking wine?” The Muslim colleague smiled gently. 
          “My family have been Muslims for a thousand years,” he said, “during which time
          we have always been drinking wine….You see, we are Muslim wine-drinkers.” The
          questioner looked bewildered. "I don’t understand,” he said.  “Yes, I know,” replied 
          his native informant, “but I do.”

 Reference:  Ahmed, S.  (2015).  What is Islam?  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton University Press.  

Prompt option 4: Human or Machine?

  “...you don’t remember a world without robots. There was a time when humanity faced the universe alone and without a friend. Now he has creatures to help him; stronger creatures than himself, more faithful, more useful, and absolutely devoted to him. Mankind is no longer alone. Have you ever thought of it that way?” Dr. Susan Calvin in I, Robot, p. xi

In 1950, Isaac Asimov imagined a future world in which verbal and sentient robots would be virtually indistinguishable from human beings. In June of 2021, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), granted the neurotech company Synchron approval to begin testing brain implants on humans. More recently (Feb. 2022), a Swiss research team announced that a completely paralyzed man was able to walk again thanks to electrical implants in his spine. As science and society push us ever closer to making Asimov’s imagined future a reality, we invite you to consider the advantages and disadvantages of that future, and what we could or should be doing in the present to ensure that humanity survives. 

References:  Asimov, Isaac.  I, Robot. Random House, 1950.
“FDA grant regulatory approval to start testing brain implant on humans” Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 2 Aug. 2021,  https://ai-med.io/more-news/fda-grant-regulatory-approval-to-start-testing-brain-implant-on-humans/. Accessed 15 Feb. 2022.
“Paralysed man with severed spine walks thanks to implant” BBC online, 7 Feb. 2022, https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60258620. Accessed 15 Feb. 2022.

 



For the thinking, the eager, and the courageous