My apology, what I mean by open curriculum is that despite a distribution requirement, you can choose what classes to study as long as they satisfy that requirement for graduation not the “Brown-type” open curriculum but thank you for sharing!
@hola1997: For the record, Harvard has 8 General Education requirements (Aesthetic and Interpretive Understanding, Culture and Belief, Empirical and Mathematical Reasoning, Ethical Reasoning, Science of Living Systems, Science of the Physical Universe, Societies of the World and United States in the World) plus Expository writing and a foreign language requirement.
In theory, students should have all their Gen Ed, ExPos and FL requirements completed by junior year, so they can spend their time and energy senior year on writing their thesis. When you add specific concentration requirements into the mix, which vary depending upon your concentration, there really isn’t too much room in a student’s schedule to load up on “classes you want to study” unless you are planning to take 5 or 6 courses per semester (most students take 4 classes for semester). However, students do have the freedom to select courses within each Gen Ed and ExPos requirement, so I suppose Harvard’s curriculum is “open” in that respect, as you do get to choose the courses, unlike Columbia’s General Education (core) requirements.
@gibby : Thanks for the very specific details!!
Not everyone at Harvard writes a thesis. If your concentration is 10 classes and expos is 1 and gen ed is 8 classes that still leaves you over 10 classes to get to 32 which is four classes per semester
^^ Don’t forget foreign language classes – for some kids that could be an additional 4 courses, thereby decreasing the number of “elective” courses.
^^^The foreign language requirement is two semesters, not four.