Question: For your info, I am a 17yr high school student currently live in Australia. As the applications for university entry is just around the corner, I am searching for an appropriate degree that suits my interest.

I frequently come across these various "honours" degree and not "straight forward" degree.

For instance, I want to do civil engineering, I see:

"Bachelors of Engineering (Honours)" and not "Bachelor of Civil Engineering" or "Bachelor of computer science"

**SO What exactly is an honours degree?**

I would normally ask these questions to the career guidance and career fest at my local school, but due to the current situation, I hardly get the opportunity to ask any questions about universities and whatnot. So I apologise if this question is too basic or inappropriate for this site. Thanks.

Here is the site I am looking at:
<https://future-students.uq.edu.au/study/programs/bachelor-engineering-honours-2342>

Answer: 
Caveat that this is not a definitive answer, and probably could be considered a long comment, but it's the best I could do.

After some research I discovered a description of [Bachelor of Engineering (BE)](https://my.uq.edu.au/programs-courses/program.html?acad_prog=2001) at UQ (from 2015), which has this note:

> 
> Please refer to: BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING (HONOURS)
> 
> 
> The Bachelor of
> Engineering is no longer available.
> 
> 
> 

This is the equivalent [Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (BE(Hons))](https://my.uq.edu.au/programs-courses/program.html?acad_prog=2342&year=2021) from 2021. Note that both course requirements include 64 units.

So for some reason UQ has dropped the non-Honours degree, but I don't know how this would work. For example, from Monash (of which I am very familiar) [they state](https://www.monash.edu/engineering/current-students/enrolment-and-re-enrolment/course-information/honours-weighted-average):

> 
> In Engineering we award our bachelor degrees with honours for
> meritorious performance. An additional honours year is not required.
> 
> 
> 

And I expected that UQ would have been the same given that the the course load for both honours and non-honours was the same. I can't explain how they can just hand out an honours degree.

Please note that on the UQ pages they have a direct contact number for enquiries. I'd highly recommend that given you can't speak to your local guidance people that you call the university directly:

> 
> Enquiries for Australian students
> 
> 
> Manager, Academic Administration, Faculty of Engineering, Architecture
> and Information Technology
> 
> 
> Email: enquiries@eait.uq.edu.au
> 
> 
> Phone: 07
> 3365 4777
> 
> 
> 

Finally, in the Australian way of things you get a degree in Engineering with the speciality in parenthesis. EG "Bachelor of Engineering (Civil)" and not "Bachelor of Civil Engineering"
The reason is they found it was hard to get students jobs without the additional honours degree component. It's just an extra year of study with an internship component.
the internship component is the actual reason it's an honours, as they cannot cram everything into 3 years, and a bachelor's full time is not meant to be 4 years.

Yes, they add a thesis and some extra subjects, but it is really about the internship.

Better advice is to do a double degree - it adds an extra year into your time there, but it broadens your knowledge, makes you more versatile and gives you a better idea of what you want to do.