Honors Diploma

For some students, earning an Honors Diploma is an important goal. I have to be honest, this is not a factor for the colleges because the honors diploma recognition isn't granted until you graduate so colleges are not considering it when making their admissions decisions. The requirements for the honors diploma listed below are established by the state department of education.

To receive an honors diploma you need to fulfill 7 of the following 8 criteria:

- English: 4 units
- Math: 4 units (CCSS Math 3 and another higher level course)
- Science: 4 units (including two advanced level sciences)
- Social Studies: 4 units
- Foreign Language: 3 units (including at least 2 units in each language studied)
- Fine Arts: 1 unit (during high school)
- Grade Point Average: 3.5 on a 4.0 scale
- ACT/ SAT Score (excluding scores from the writing sections): 27 ACT/ 1280 SAT

One of the areas that I have noticed as a trend of some students falling short of meeting the honors diploma requirements is in Social Studies since only 3 credits are required for graduation so students won't take the full 4th credit needed. The other area where students frequently don't meet the designated standard is with the 1 credit of Fine Art.  This is because many students rely on the fine art courses they took during middle school for their graduation requirements, but those courses do not equal high school credits.  (They count for graduation, but aren't actual credits earned.)  So students who want to have that requirement met for the honors diploma would need to complete the 1 credit of fine art during the high school years. 

Don't forget, it would still be possible to earn an honors diploma if you were missing one of these, but you will need to make sure you fulfill all of the remaining criterion.

Also, I wanted to point out that these are the requirements for the most common honors diploma, but there are also honors diploma available for students participating in the IB diploma program or in a Career Tech program at the Delaware Area Career Center and the state of Ohio just recently announced additional pathways to honors diploma including a new STEM Honors Diploma, an Arts Honors Diploma, and a Social Science & Civic Engagement Honors Diploma.