Torrey Honors Program (Biola University)

Torrey Honors College at Biola University is a Great Books honors program modeled on the Oxford tutorial, anchored in Socratic discussion of primary texts from Plato through the twentieth century. It is a college honors program, not a dual-enrollment pathway, a distinction families should understand before planning around it.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Great Books seminar / Socratic tutorial / classical
Worldview	Christian-evangelical (Biola is an evangelical Protestant university)
Grades	Undergraduate (college); pre-college summer pathway for rising high school seniors from underserved communities
Formats	Residential college program with live in-person "sessions" and faculty mentor relationships
Cost tier	Premium (Biola undergraduate tuition rates)
Parent intensity	1 (not a homeschool curriculum; no parent teaching)
ESA-common	Not applicable, this is undergraduate tuition at an accredited university
Accredited	Yes, Biola University is accredited by the WASC Senior College and University Commission
Established	Torrey Honors founded 1995; named for evangelist and educator Reuben Archer Torrey
Website	biola.edu/torrey

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	5	Oxford-tutorial-style discussion of primary texts; hundreds of hours of seminar time over four years
Ease of teaching	5	College honors program; no parent teaching involved
Content quality	5	Primary-text reading list spans antiquity through modernity; faculty mentors are credentialed scholars
Flexibility	2	Residential four-year honors commitment; not a la carte
Value for money	3	Priced as undergraduate honors education at a private Christian university
Worldview scope	3	Evangelical Protestant institutional home; texts and discussion range across the Western canon including non-Christian voices
Visual/design	4	Campus and program infrastructure at a mature university
Support resources	5	One-on-one faculty mentorship across four years; Oxford semester option

Who the publisher is

The Torrey Honors Program was founded in 1995 at Biola University, a private evangelical Christian university in La Mirada, California, with roots going back to the founding of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles in 1908. Biola's evangelical Protestant institutional character is explicit, the university holds a doctrinal statement affirming historic Protestant evangelical positions, and faculty sign onto this statement as a condition of employment. The university has a student body of several thousand across undergraduate and graduate programs and a strong institutional presence in Christian higher education in the western United States.

Torrey Honors itself is named for Reuben Archer Torrey, the evangelist and educator who served as superintendent of Moody Bible Institute and was a central figure in turn-of-the-twentieth-century evangelical education. The program was designed to provide a rigorous Great Books honors track within Biola's undergraduate structure, modeled deliberately on the Oxford tutorial and drawing inspiration from St. John's College's Great Books program in Annapolis and Santa Fe. Torrey Honors students replace Biola's standard general-education requirements with the honors curriculum, progressing through primary texts in small discussion "sessions" rather than lecture courses.

An important factual note for families evaluating this program for high school purposes. For many years, Biola operated an associated program called Torrey Academy and a broader umbrella called Biola Youth Academics, which provided high school-level classical humanities courses and some dual-enrollment pathways for homeschool students in Southern California and online. Biola Youth Academics and Torrey Academy closed at the end of the Spring 2020 semester. Former Torrey Academy faculty launched two successor programs independent of Biola, Star Homeschool Academy and Emmaus Classical Academy, neither of which is affiliated with Biola University. Families who encounter older references to Torrey Academy as a homeschool dual-enrollment pathway should know that it no longer exists in that form. The current Torrey Honors Program is an undergraduate college honors program.

Biola does offer one pre-college pathway for rising high school seniors called Read Well, Live Well, a free two-week summer seminar for students from underserved communities in the greater Los Angeles area, funded by a Teagle Foundation grant. This is a recruitment and preparation program rather than a dual-enrollment credit pathway.

The core pedagogy

Torrey Honors is taught almost entirely through discussion. Students meet in small cohorts for three-hour "sessions" built around primary texts. A Torrey Honors professor opens each session with a carefully constructed question, one broad enough to sustain several hours of exploration, and students spend the session working through the text together, with the professor guiding rather than lecturing. The pedagogy is Socratic in the classical sense: the faculty member's job is to ask, not to tell, and the students' job is to read carefully and speak with evidence.

Across four years, Torrey Honors students accumulate hundreds of hours of seminar discussion on a reading list that runs from Plato, Aristotle, and the Hebrew Bible through Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, and Shakespeare into Kant, Dostoevsky, and twentieth-century voices including Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and Frederick Douglass. The reading list is substantive and does not limit itself to Christian authors; the program reads the canon as the canon.

Signature mechanics: (1) Three-hour sessions in small cohorts. The unit of instruction is the sustained multi-hour discussion, not the fifty-minute lecture. (2) Faculty mentor pairing. Each incoming student is paired with a faculty mentor, a "Torrey Tutor", who serves as advisor, guide, and advocate across all four years. (3) Oxford semester. Qualified students can spend a semester at Wycliffe Hall at the University of Oxford, studying in the Oxford tutorial system itself. (4) Integration with Biola's degree structure. Torrey Honors replaces Biola's general-education core; students still major in a discipline (English, theology, business, film, and so on) but take their gen-ed equivalents through Torrey.

A day in the life

A sophomore in Torrey Honors has a rhythm that blends intense preparation with extended discussion. Tuesday morning, she completes the assigned reading, this week, Book V of Plato's Republic (roughly fifty pages), annotating as she reads, noting questions and passages for discussion. Tuesday evening, she attends a three-hour session with her cohort and a faculty tutor. The professor opens with a question about justice and the role of the family in the good city; three hours later, the cohort has worked through several key passages, raised counterarguments, and pushed each other's readings. Wednesday she has a one-on-one meeting with her faculty mentor to discuss her academic plan. Thursday she attends her discipline major courses (chemistry, English literature, business, whatever she has chosen to major in) outside the Torrey structure. Friday she begins the next week's reading.

Over four years, this rhythm accumulates into what Torrey graduates routinely describe as a transformative educational experience, not in the marketing sense of that phrase but in the plain descriptive sense: the student who finishes Torrey has read deeply, argued extensively, and been mentored consistently.

What they do exceptionally well

The Oxford-tutorial model delivered at scale. Very few American undergraduate programs have genuinely committed to Socratic seminar discussion as the central pedagogy. St. John's College does it, a handful of small Great Books programs do it, and Torrey does it within a larger university context. The combination of three-hour sessions, faculty mentor pairing, and the Oxford semester option is distinctive.

Faculty mentorship as a four-year relationship. Every Torrey student is matched to a faculty mentor on arrival, and that relationship runs the full four years. This level of individualized faculty engagement is rare even at expensive private colleges and is particularly unusual within an evangelical institutional context.

A coherent honors track inside a full university. Students get Torrey's intensive humanities formation without giving up the ability to major in STEM, business, the arts, or any other Biola discipline. A chemistry major can graduate from Torrey with the same seminar formation as a theology major.

What they do poorly

Not a homeschool curriculum or a dual-enrollment pathway. The batch data we inherited described this program as "dual-enrollment access for qualified high school students." As of April 2026, this is not an accurate description of Biola's current offerings. Torrey Honors is an undergraduate college program; its associated high school dual-enrollment pathway (Torrey Academy) closed in 2020. Families searching for a Torrey-style high school dual-enrollment experience should look to the successor programs (Star Homeschool Academy, Emmaus Classical Academy) or to other classical Christian online academies, not to current Biola offerings.

Full undergraduate tuition commitment. Torrey Honors is priced as Biola undergraduate education. Biola's published tuition runs well above $40,000 per year, with financial aid and scholarships reducing net cost for many families but not making it a low-cost option. This is a college choice, not a course purchase.

Doctrinal alignment required institutionally. Biola's evangelical Protestant doctrinal statement applies at the institutional level, including faculty hiring. Students are not required to sign the statement, but the institutional culture is explicitly evangelical Protestant. Families from Catholic, Orthodox, non-Christian, or more theologically diverse evangelical backgrounds should evaluate this institutional character rather than assume Biola is a generic Christian university.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Torrey Honors (for undergraduate study) if: your student is a high-performing homeschool graduate seeking a Great Books honors track at an evangelical Christian university; your family is aligned with or neutral toward Biola's evangelical Protestant institutional home; your student wants sustained Socratic seminar pedagogy alongside a disciplinary major; you can afford Biola undergraduate tuition or qualify for substantial aid; your student is considering graduate study in the humanities, law, or ministry.

• Skip Torrey Honors if: you are looking for a homeschool curriculum or high school dual-enrollment program (Torrey Honors is neither); you are looking for secular Great Books education (look to St. John's College); your family is not aligned with evangelical Protestant theology; your college budget does not accommodate private-Christian-university tuition; your student prefers lecture-based instruction over seminar discussion.

Cost honest assessment

Torrey Honors does not have separate tuition; it is an honors track within Biola University, priced at Biola's standard undergraduate tuition rates. Biola's tuition and fees page lists current cost of attendance, which as of the 2025-2026 academic year runs above $48,000 annually before aid for on-campus students. Financial aid and scholarships (institutional, need-based, and merit) reduce net cost for many admitted students. The Read Well, Live Well pre-college summer program for underserved high school juniors is free for participants, funded by grant.

For comparison: St. John's College (secular Great Books) lists comparable private-college tuition with generous aid; Thomas Aquinas College (Catholic Great Books) runs slightly lower; Hillsdale College residential tuition is comparable to Biola's. Families evaluating a Great Books college experience should compare these programs by theological home and net cost after aid rather than sticker price.

A realistic family budget for four years at Biola with aid is institution- and family-specific; the financial aid office at Biola is the appropriate starting point for actual numbers.

ESA eligibility notes

State ESA programs are structured for K-12 education, not undergraduate college tuition. Torrey Honors is college, not K-12, and is therefore outside the scope of most state ESA programs. Families seeking ESA-reimbursed high school dual enrollment should look at the Hillsdale, Patrick Henry College, or community-college alternatives described above, not at Torrey Honors. Read Well, Live Well is free and does not require ESA funds.

Alternatives

• St. John's College (Annapolis and Santa Fe), a family would choose St. John's over Torrey Honors because St. John's is the largest and oldest dedicated Great Books program in America, is secular (classical but non-sectarian), and commits the entire four-year curriculum to seminar discussion; Biola retains a major structure outside the honors track.
• Thomas Aquinas College, a family would choose TAC over Torrey Honors because TAC is Catholic, uses a comparable seminar model, and anchors the Great Books in the Catholic intellectual tradition; Torrey operates from an evangelical Protestant home.
• Star Homeschool Academy or Emmaus Classical Academy, a family looking specifically for a Torrey-style high school homeschool classical academy would choose one of these successor programs, which were launched by former Torrey Academy faculty after Biola closed the high school arm in 2020; neither is affiliated with Biola.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed Torrey Honors College's main site, the academic format page, the reading list, the Read Well, Live Well page, the Torrey Honors FAQ, and the Biola University main site. We cross-referenced against Biola's 2019 press release announcing the closure of Biola Youth Academics and Torrey Academy, and the successor program sites Star Homeschool Academy and Emmaus Classical Academy. Program details verified April 2026.