<p>Do students tend to use the open curriculum to only study things in their major, or to take advantage of interesting courses outside their major that they normally would not have time for with the open curriculum?</p>
<p>Well, taking courses outside your major to explore and challenge yourself is what the curriculum encourages you to do, but my alumni interviewer admits that he took courses mostly in his major, and did not really “take advantage” of the open curriculum in terms of that. But better for him , I guess, he’s in medical school there now.</p>
<p>The Open Curriculum applies to the “general education” portion of your time at Brown. The concentration, or major, is controlled by the department/discipline and approved by the CCC and has course requirements. In addition to completing a concentration, Brown students must complete 30 total courses (inc. concentration) and demonstrate proficiency in writing. The non-concentration portion of those minimum 30 courses (maximum 40, standard is 32) is known as the general curriculum. Brown allows you to choose any classes you’d like to fulfill this space.</p>
<p>Please read post below as a primer to the open curriculum:
<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/385841-brown-curriculum-university-college-explained.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/brown-university/385841-brown-curriculum-university-college-explained.html</a></p>
<p>modestmelody… I guess better wording of that would have been “pertaining to their major” instead of “in their major”.
My question really is: For example, are there any Biology majors in History classes just for the heck of it because they can, or do people tend to shy away from that and think “Hey, room for more bio electives”?</p>
<p>“The number of students who fulfill a “distribution” (two courses in the social sciences, two courses in the humanities, two courses in the sciences) hovers around 95% each year” THANK YOU</p>
<p>I’ve met people here whose “softest” class (soft as in soft-science, where humanities are the softest, math and physics are the hardest… not at all correlated to difficulty) is in CogSci. But there are also people in the sciences who try and indulge in a completely different area of interest, like CS majors taking a lot of history classes just because they’re interesting. And then most people who actively shop just try to find the most interesting classes to fill their schedule, wherever they may be.</p>
<p>As an admitted ED, I like the open curriculum most because it gives me freedom not only to take more courses in my area of study, but also to explore new areas. This being said, I also was attracted to the Open Curriculum because it gives me the freedom to boycott English/Literature courses.</p>
<p>@floatingriver
we have the exact same idea! boycott lit!</p>