Colleges that don’t have a Core Curriculum Requirement

[Mom0012]

What are some colleges that, similar to University of Rochester, do not have a core curriculum or specific gen ed requirements?  We’re looking on the eastern side of the country.

 

[mom1720]

Brown and Hamilton

[kirag714]

Vassar

[Arch at Home]

Smith

[Chris in VA]

Very interesting idea. 

[kokotg]

Amherst and Wesleyan

("open curriculum" was a prominent square on our imaginary college tour bingo game last summer 😂)

[kokotg]

I'd also observe that even liberal arts colleges that don't have a completely open curriculum often have only a few, very broad distribution requirements. DS has enough different interests--as long as he never has to take biology again, he'll be happy--that it wound up being a non-issue when he was deciding where to apply. 

[Corraleno]

For a humanities/language/social science major who wants to focus on the major rather than take lots of unrelated courses in other disciplines, another way to approach the issue is to look at universities with a large department in the major,  because they will often have a lot of cross-listed courses that can be used to fulfill GEs. That was one of the reasons DS chose his university — his department offers courses that fulfill GEs in English comp, math, data analysis, social science, US history & culture, and world cultures. He is planning to knock out a couple of science GEs through CLEP, so he will be left with one science, one history, and one art course; all other courses will be either in his major or electives he's interested in.

[Mom0012]

8 hours ago, kokotg said:

I'd also observe that even liberal arts colleges that don't have a completely open curriculum often have only a few, very broad distribution requirements. DS has enough different interests--as long as he never has to take biology again, he'll be happy--that it wound up being a non-issue when he was deciding where to apply. 

I’ve just started looking more in-depth at core requirements for the list of colleges my dd and I have come up with so far.  She will have a number of AP classes and will likely CLEP out of a few the summer before college, so maybe it won’t be as much of an issue?  She loves the idea of picking the areas she wants to focus on and study and Rochester is one school she keeps bringing up because of this.

My poor ds has such a long list of liberal learning requirements and core classes he has to take for the business school, there is no room for him to take even one history class beyond freshman year.  He’ll survive, but it makes me a bit sad for him because he loves history.

[katilac]

New College of Florida is ultra-flexible and has an intriguing method. Students and professors create individual learning contracts each semester, and students work on an independent study project every January. Everyone does a senior thesis project.