High school students on the college prep track are going to greater lengths to become competitive applicants for honors programs and their attendant scholarships, especially in the face of escalating college costs. All stakeholders in honors education--students, families, teachers, and administrators--face steeper financial challenges than they did ten years ago. Characteristics of honors education that are valued at both the high school and college levels, such as small class size and independent research, are time consuming and expensive to provide and to assess. The systemization of high school honors education combined with the high cost of providing honors programs at the college level has essentially paved the road for for-profit organizations, such as American Honors, to become more prevalent at the college level, which is something the author, a college professor at the University of South Alabama, adamantly opposes. This article discusses how students, high schools, and administrators are paying the price in more way than one due to the current standardized nature of honors education.