Arizona's Universities

Arizona State University  Northern Arizona University  University of Arizona

A stellar university education

Three universities: Arizona State University, Northern Arizona University, University of Arizona. Three institutions offering distinctive, nationally recognized academic programs. Three unique sets of campus cultures and climates.

One requirement for a stellar university education is a critical mass of other highly-motivated, academically well-prepared students eager for the same kind of intellectual challenges and camaraderie that you are seeking.

Arizona’s universities, though large, have developed such communities in their nationally renowned honors programs and colleges. These campuses-within-campuses achieve academic and social environments comparable to their Ivy League counterparts.

As a student of high caliber, you naturally seek educational experiences of equally high caliber. You’ll find them as an honors student at an Arizona university.

Outcomes Count

Of course, the value of your education is not only measured in your experience as a student. Outcomes also count.

What happens to Arizona’s top university students after they graduate? Exactly what you would expect from the best and most motivated learners. Most pursue further education: law, medicine, creative writing, architecture, public health, business, environmental policy, biochemistry--a list as expansive as your imagination.

Our Flinn Scholar alumni regularly attend graduate school with significant, often full, funding from their post-graduate institutions. An ever-growing number undertake their life’s work overseas, continuing the pattern of global study and travel they began as Flinn Scholars. Many do so with support from the country’s most prestigious and competitive national awards: Rhodes, Marshall, Fulbright, and Gates Scholarships.

You will have opportunity for such experiences not only because of your talents and your internal motivation. Your participation in one of Arizona’s university honors programs or colleges will help you establish the relationships you need—whether with faculty, students, or community members—to craft a pace-setting education.

What else is there to say? Actually, a lot.

At an Arizona university, your educational experience will include:

Specialized Curriculum

Numerous honors courses—designed for small numbers of highly motivated, high-achieving, and thoroughly engaged students—are available in most disciplines at all three universities.

These classes bring together students with a broad range of interests to work through The Big Issues: the history of thought in the Western world; the nature of creativity; the role of technology in shaping human behavior.

These are the courses that give students a common referential and intellectual vocabulary that they can apply to the equivalent Big Questions they will soon encounter in their chosen careers.

Honors Contracts

In many other courses, honors students meet with professors and negotiate distinct course requirements to match their level of preparation for and specific interests in the course. These honors contracts allow students to customize their educational experience within the tremendously broad offerings of the university.

Independent Study

More advanced students often partner with faculty members whose expertise fits the students’ curiosity; together they plan a course of readings, activities, research, and meetings that comprise a self-designed plan of study.

Through these courses, students pursue their most field’s most vital questions—and, in so doing, begin contributing to the generation of new knowledge, advancing understanding of themselves and of the world.

Residence Halls

Much of a student’s most important learning occurs beyond the classroom. Thus, all three universities provide housing specifically for honors students, accommodations that foster a culture of creative problem solving, experiential learning, and personal growth.

Study Abroad

We live in a world that is wonderfully diverse in its peoples, cultures, and experiences. Intimate, direct experience of that world forms an important dimension of your education.

All three universities have robust study-abroad programs that allow students to build relationships with and in the larger world, and all three universities allow honors students to develop their own study-abroad program that ensures a customized fit between their goals and the world.

A Final Note

Faculty and administrators at Arizona’s universities exercise considerable flexibility in helping their best students--students like you—recognize and fulfill their highest ambitions—even when you haven’t yet identified or articulated what those might be.

Indeed, there is an overriding theme to the advantages just described:

As an honors student at one of these three universities, virtually whatever you can imagine, you can do.