As a former "honors"-program student, I found that the main value of the program was the group of like-minded peers, whom took their educations seriously, were competitive on academics, extracurriculars, and other achievements. The actual material wasn't terribly different than the regular classroom.

I had also been in regular classrooms, where the "cool kids" were the ones who weren't "keeners", goofed off in class, who had sexual experiences the earliest or who would drink and do drugs at a young age.