While honors programs and colleges often proclaim the importance of recruiting and retaining a diverse group of high-ability students, many are still exclusionary and predicated on assumptions about the student body that are no longer valid. The structure and programming of honors can thus prohibit the full participation of nontraditional students and compound the personal and psychological barriers that keep many talented, high-achieving nontraditional students from pursuing honors. Yet the diverse voices that nontraditional students provide can add a fuller range of perspectives to the programs and especially to the discussion-based honors courses. Furthermore, nontraditional students are crucial to the future health of honors; with the seismic shift in student demographics, honors programs ignore nontraditional students at their own peril. This article discusses the important impact that nontraditional students bring to honors programs.