Facts about Barrett, the Honors College at Arizona State University

Barrett students:

Barrett enrolls about 3,200 students, 73 percent of them from Arizona, with an average SAT score of 1323 and a high school GPA of 3.86. About 540 are National Merit Scholars.

Barrett received almost 2,000 applications this fall for 962 spots in the 2009 freshman class, a 26 percent increase over last year. Of these, 854 freshmen are enrolled at the Tempe campus and the remaining 108 at the other three campuses.

Among Barrett graduates in 2008-09, 72 percent were headed to graduate or professional school. Of the other 28 percent, 90 percent are employed in their field of study.

Fall 2009 Barrett freshmen are 57 percent female and 30 percent minority. Almost 95 percent received some type of scholarship. Twenty percent are majoring in engineering, 39 percent liberal arts and sciences, and 16 percent business or finance.

About 95 percent of freshmen will live on campus this year, compared to 84 percent last year.

Twelve Barrett students have been named to the USA Today all-academic teams in the past eight years, more than from any other public university in the country. Barrett has had five Marshall Scholars and three Truman Scholars in the same time period.

The new Barrett campus:

The new seven-building campus on nine acres houses 1,700 students and is expected to be fully occupied.

The new campus has 12 classrooms, dining center, faculty and administrative offices, computer lounge, fitness center, and social lounges with flat screen TVs. It is the first entire campus ever built for an honors college in the United States.

About 250 students study and live in a student-designed Sustainability House, with low-consumption plumbing fixtures, energy monitoring for individual rooms, recycled gray water, a green roof and organic garden. This community occupies three floors in Sage Hall.

American Campus Communities developed the Barrett campus in partnership with ASU, bearing most of the $130 million cost. ASU’s contribution was $3.8 million, and ARAMARK put in $5 million for the dining hall.

The seven residence halls offer five types of living choices: singles, two-bedroom quads, two-bedroom doubles, and suites with three or four private bedrooms, a living room, two bathrooms and a kitchenette.

The halls are built around six courtyards of varying size and function, with a sand volleyball court, performance area, extensive landscaping, shade structures and a gas fireplace with seating.

The 20,000 square-foot dining hall has nine serving stations, including salad bar, stir-fry station, pizza oven and grill. There are five dining areas, including an outdoor patio and a two-story Refectory with hardwood floors and clerestory windows.

All the buildings meet silver certification standards on the LEED Green Building Rating system. The site includes water-efficient landscaping, a high-reflecting roof, fluorescent lighting, insulated glazing and double-paned windows, and energy-efficient HVAC systems.

All the artwork in public spaces was created by current and former ASU students.

Barrett characteristics:

Barrett has its own faculty of 23, including 15 Honors Faculty Fellows who teach small seminars ranging from humanities and fine arts to science and math. About 1,200 professors from departments across the university serve as honors advisors and mentors and work with honors students on coursework and special projects.

Barrett students can choose from more than 250 majors throughout ASU, participating in the vast resources of a major research university while enjoying the personalized attention of a small college. Barrett also offers an extensive summer study-abroad program.

Reader’s Digest named Barrett to its “Best in America” list in 2005, for offering “an Ivy League-style education minus the sticker shock.” It stands alone among 65 honors colleges in America for having its own full-service campus and faculty.

The ASU Honors College was created in 1988 by an act of the Arizona Board of Regents to provide exceptional educational opportunities for outstanding students. Intel CEO Craig Barrett and his wife Barbara, an ASU alumna, endowed the college with a $10 million gift in 2000.

Costs to attend Barrett at the ASU Tempe campus:
Room rates in the Barrett complex are comparable to those in ASU’s Hassayampa residence hall complex that opened two years ago: $6,389 to $6,929 a year, depending on configuration. A studio/efficiency is more.

An unlimited meal plan is $4,900 a year. Tuition and fees for a first-time Arizona freshman at Barrett in Tempe are $7,340.

Project team for the new campus:

Architects for the complex were DWL Architects and Planners and IKON.5 Architects. General contractors were Kitchell Contractors and Hardison/Downey/Kitchell. American Campus Communities is one of the largest developers, owners and managers of high-quality student housing in the U.S.

The project team utilized 20 percent of locally manufactured materials as part of the construction process. They diverted 90 percent of the construction wastes from local landfills through an extensive onsite recycling program.