<p>I'm a rising senior looking to apply to several LAC's and am interested mostly in schools with no distribution requirements or required classes. </p>
<p>Questions
1. What schools fit these criterion?
2. Opinions on gen ed. requirements, etc.</p>
<p>1) Brown University (where I'm goin' next year. it's not an LAC though) and Amherst are two that I know of.</p>
<p>yeah, I know about those two..I was hoping that there were colleges besides the ultra-selective that offered those types of programs. I'm going to apply to Amherst but it's quite the reach.</p>
<p>Check out Grinnell.</p>
<p>iowa..blah.</p>
<p>Hamilton says about itself to have an open curriculum but they still make you take a quantitative and three writing-intensive classes. Wake Forest does have distribution requirements but you can apply to have them waived.</p>
<p>I don't like a core curriculum as well, but what's so bad about distribution requirements when they are flexible enough? E.g. BMC requires two classes each in the social sciences, natural sciences and humanities. You can fulfill the humanities requirement with anything from English, philosophy, theater or fine arts classes, and the natural sciences with statistics, computer science, psychology (!) or a traditional hard science.</p>
<p>I agree that avoiding any school with even distribution reqs will make your college list very short. And if not very short, very eclectic in every way aside from the open curriculum. In terms of distribution requirements, there is a wide variety of how stringent these are, and I would not rule out schools that have a few. As B@r!um alluded to, one can often fulfill a science requirement with something quite humanities oriented, and vice versa, as well as with AP and IB scores.</p>
<p>No required classes--yes!! I completely agree!--here are just a few:
Bennington
Hampshire
Bard
Eugene Lang
Evergreen</p>
<p>University of Rochester also, I believe, has no requirements.</p>
<p>Coming from a school that has many, many requirements (University of Chicago), I have to say that I adore my core curriculum. In choosing classes, I often feel like a kid in a candy store, and, much like a kid in a candy store, I have no idea on how to stock up. What if I load up my bag with gummy worms and only later regret that I didn't get any chocolate? Core/distribution requirements, I think, are a great way to not only make sure that you experience different topics and different fields, but also may sure that you get used to thinking in different ways.</p>
<p>Also, core and distribution requirements also sometimes put a new spin on a topic you thought you hated. A lot of my friends at Chicago thought they were "non-math" people, but once they took a quantitative course, they were able to appreciate math more. I took more Spanish to satisfy distribution requirements and I ended up liking it a lot more than I thought I would.</p>
<p>At Chicago specifically, core courses are not only designed to open you up to new ideas, but to open you up to some of the biggest thoughts and ideas in all of human history. You're put in small, discussion classes and you're assigned primary sources. Not only are you giving yourself a foundation for whatever major you will eventually pursue, but you are sharpening your skill set by learning how to read, write, think, and ask questions. Even though a pre-med may never again think about Marx, by reading, discussing, and writing about the text, he or she is honing his or her critical thinking skills, and learning how to probe a dense text for insight is not unlike learning how to probe a cancerous cell for insight.</p>
<p>A lot of schools don't have required classes, but will have area requirements, which are usually just as good as an open curriculum.</p>