I am helping a friend with a college search, and she wants to never have to take math again. I did not have to at my college and I had other non STEM friends at LACs (Bard, Kenyon, Kalamazoo, Smith) who didn’t either. I am not trying to start a discussion on whether this is a good idea! I just want to know if there are more schools that do not have math as a graduation requirement.
Brown
Evergreen State
Amherst
Some schools may have a math requirement that is easily satisfied by high school math knowledge (perhaps by placement testing or SAT or ACT scores).
In any case knowledge of statistics is often generally useful, and may be required for many majors other than arts and humanities.
Bard actually has a full plate of distribution requirements, including in Mathematics and Computing:
Each student is required to take one course in each of these nine categories:
Analysis of Arts (a course in the analysis of nonverbal art)
Foreign Language, Literature, and Culture (a course focused on language acquisition and/or the analysis of literature or culture via an engagement with a non-English language)
History (a course focused on historical analysis)
Humanities (a course focused on the analysis of primary texts in philosophy, religion, or social thought)
Laboratory Science (a laboratory course in the physical or life sciences)
Literature in English (a course focused on the literary analysis and explication of texts in English, in either the original or translation)
Mathematics and Computing (a course in mathematics, computing, statistics, or logic; all courses require passing the Q-test, a mathematical skills evaluation exam)
Practicing Arts (a studio course in the visual or performing arts, or creative writing)
Social Science (a course in an empirical social science other than history)
In addition, all students must fulfill a “Rethinking Difference” requirement. Courses with this designation focus on the study of difference in the context of larger social dynamics; they may consider the contexts of globalization, nationalism, and social justice, as well as differences of race, religion, ethnicity, class, gender, and/or sexuality. A single course may simultaneously fulfill both the “Rethinking Difference” requirement and another distribution requirement.
Thanks SpiritManager for the helpful info – But you can take a logic course from Bard’s philosophy department and avoid an actual math class. That’s the kind of workaround that we are interested in.
University of Rochester. You have to take 3 related classes from the Math & Natural Sciences area, but none of them have to be math. Of course, a particular major might require a course such as statistics, but it’s not required as part of the core requirements for all students.
Colleges that have open curriculums: Hamilton, Wesleyan, Brown ect
there are univs that have some easy math or “other math” or stats classes that fulfill the req’ts.
If she barely survived high school math, then she may be concerned that a college math req’t would be harder…not necessarily. some are quite easy.
I have one math-averse son. He transferred to Temple, which ostensibly has a “Quantitative” requirement, but he fulfilled it with a sort of catch-all Stats/Social Sciences course taught by an Anthropology professor. Some Math/Science students took it to fulfill Social Science requirement, while Liberal Arts students used it for Quantitative. It was pretty painless, and the curve was generous enough for his 79 average to earn him a B+.Other son is at an “open curriculum” school where they only require Math from students who haven’t earned a threshold score (fairly low) on a standardized test of some sort. That’s actually pretty common. When my older son and I visited Emerson, they waived a Math requirement for SAT scores over 500 or 550.
Grinnell - it has no distribution requirements.
There are actually quite a few colleges that don’t require the kind of math you’re talking about for graduation. Almost all the schools I visited only required a certain number of courses in “Quantitative Thinking” for graduation, which is not necessarily just math. The colleges that come to mind are Harvard, JHU, and SMU. There are many more, I’m just not thinking of them right now. Obviously, though, this would also depend on the major she pursues.
A student who dislikes math may find this workaround to be an “out of the frying pan into the fire” type of course, unless the only math that s/he was ok with was the proofs in high school geometry.
Logic, like statistics, can be generally useful, though.
Actually, it does have distribution requirements (no more than 92 out of 124 credits in any one division, where division is defined as humanities, social studies, or science – see http://catalog.grinnell.edu/content.php?catoid=7&navoid=1220 ), but not in math specifically.
Canadian universities don’t require math.
Even at big universities, you can sometimes use a logic course from Philosophy to satisfy math requirement. I did that at my state U way back when (and regretted it when masters required math and it was many years later -easier to do when closer to HS). Have your friend pick some schools they like because of what they offer otherwise and then check. A computer class or statistics may also work and even if you’re a humanities person stats is useful/needed for research. Again, pick your favorite schools first!
Also, lots of suggestions are smaller schools. I found that D2’s large univ had more “non-major” options than D1 small LAC. So actually easier for non-STEM person to complete science/math requirements with light versions - ex: Chemistry of cooking, math for humanities, etc.