Through the application process, we are primarily interested in getting to know you. We're interested in how you've done in school so far, what kinds of leadership activities you've been involved in, and how you see the Honors College advancing your own university and career goals. We're also interested in getting to know you intellectually, and the writing sample is one of our best ways of doing that.

We ask prospective Honors students to submit what we call a "substantial paper from high school." What do we mean by that, and what are we looking for?

Your writing sample doesn't have to be especially long, and it doesn't have to be a "research paper," although there's nothing wrong with submitting a lengthy research paper! By asking for something "substantial," we are signaling two things: We'd love to see writing with substance, and we'd love to see writing that's sustained. In Honors, we view writing as a vehicle for thinking, and we look at your writing as an example of your thinking. The topic itself is less important to us than the thoughtfulness of your discussion, or treatment, of that topic. We want to hear you in the writing—your voice, your way of thinking. Also in Honors, we value the ability to develop ideas, so we look for writing that sustains a focus over a good number of pages. It doesn't have to be 10 or 20 pages, but it shouldn't be just a paragraph or two.

Our first-year Honors classes assume that all students have a level of comfort with sustained and substantial writing. Our instructors offer guidance on high-level writing concerns such as focus, structure, development, and style. In general, students who need significant help with fluency (varied sentence structure and smooth transitions between sentences and paragraphs) and mechanics (grammar and punctuation) struggle in our classes and are best served in the required writing-intensive courses in GVSU's general education program.