RIT / Essays / Prompt 2

RIT: Honors Program Short Answer (if applying to Honors)

About 150 words

Please provide a brief statement about why you are interested in being considered for the RIT Honors Program.

What it’s really asking

Only applicants who indicate interest in the RIT Honors Program answer this. In roughly 150 words, RIT wants a focused reason you want the Honors experience specifically, not RIT in general. They are looking for intellectual drive and a concrete sense of what you would do with the extra opportunities Honors provides.

Why they ask it

At 150 words there is no room to wander. This is a test of whether you can be specific and self-aware under a tight limit, and whether your interest in Honors is grounded in real goals rather than the word 'honors' on a transcript.

Three ways in

Name the unassigned project

Point to one concrete project, research area, or interdisciplinary question you want to pursue and connect it to something you have already started.

Match a real Honors feature

Point to a specific Honors feature (research, community, flexibility) and explain why it fits how you actually work.

Show the habit, then the room

Show a habit of going beyond the assignment, then say what Honors would let you do with that habit.

✕ Weak opening

“I am interested in the RIT Honors Program because it is a prestigious opportunity for high-achieving students like me.”

✓ Strong opening

“I want Honors because I keep finishing the assignment and then doing the version the assignment did not ask for.”

✦ Annotated example · Honors: build alongside, not above. Written by EssayLens to teach, not a real applicant’s essay. Tap a highlighted line →

I do my best thinking when I am allowed to take the long way. ¹In a standard course, I answer the question that is asked. Given room, I tend to ask three more and chase the one that has no clean answer yet. The RIT Honors Program appeals to me because it treats curiosity as a project, not a hobby. The interdisciplinary seminars, the leadership requirement, and the funded experiential component would push me to build things with people outside my major, ²which is where my best ideas have always come from. I am not looking for harder problem sets. I am looking for a smaller room of people who would rather prototype a bad idea on Friday than wait until it is safe. ³I want to be the student who shows up with a half-built thing and asks what is wrong with it. Honors, as I understand it, is built for exactly that kind of unfinished, useful work, and I want in.⁴

1Opens with a concrete intellectual habit, not a cliche about 'passion.' For a 150-word Honors answer, leading with how you think is more persuasive than what you have achieved.
2Names specific Honors features (seminars, leadership, experiential component) so the answer could not be copy-pasted to another school. Specificity signals genuine research.
3Reframes Honors away from 'more rigor' toward making and risk-taking, matching RIT's maker energy over polish.
4Closes on prototyping and the value of the unfinished. The plain, confident final line fits RIT's voice and lands the answer right at the ~150-word target.

Stuck? Start here

What is one project or question you would chase in Honors that you have already started chasing on your own?
Which specific Honors feature, research, community, or flexibility, actually matches how you like to work?
When have you gone past what an assignment required, and what did that cost or teach you?

Before you submit

Does the answer point to one concrete goal rather than praising RIT in general?
Is there real evidence from your own life backing up the interest?
Is it close to 150 words and free of filler about prestige?

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