Probably wouldn’t make your parents’ list of a top university, but if you really want to avoid writing, try Washington State. My niece graduated from there in psychology and she NEVER wrote a research paper, and none of her exams required essay answers. Which astounded me, but that’s what she told me.
She was an athlete, in a sorority, and had a great time.
If you look on Pomona’s catalogue: (Degree Requirements - Pomona College - Acalog ACMS™)
"THE WRITING INTENSIVE REQUIREMENT
Students must complete at least one writing-intensive course after the completion of the Critical Inquiry seminar for first-year students and are expected to do so before the seventh semester. Writing Intensive courses are certified and supported by the Director of College Writing and the Critical Thinking Committee. A course fulfilling the Writing Intensive requirement may also be used to fulfill a Breadth of Study area requirement and/or an Analyzing Difference requirement; however, a single course cannot fulfill both the Writing Intensive and Speaking Intensive requirement."
I don’t know a ton about Pomona, but I took this to mean they had an intro course and you had to fill one other course as Writing Intensive. There certainly are LAC schools that are more writing intensive like you point out, though my point is that writing intensive doesn’t necessarily clash with the interests for @worryingabtcollege, though she mentions it.
If you’re a person who hates writing essays and analyzing literature, then writing intensive colleges are something you want to stay away from. There are schools to take off your list because of this, if you feel that strongly about it which is important to know about it.
But if you’re in a camp where you don’t like dissecting prose/poetry, akin to how many AP English Language & Composition or AP English Literature & Composition are taught, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have problems with writing courses. I’m just saying there’s not a translation which might be something to consider.
My thoughts while I researched LAC institutions and looking at a few other places that they generally offer more flexible options (which wouldn’t make writing so bad in some cases) to fill requirements, though of course they might still have them. You have to take it school by school.
Obviously all up to the individual!
One more suggestion: If you’re considering Emory in Atlanta, why not consider Georgia Tech? It’s highly prestigious, surely enough so to satisfy your parents. The Neuroscience major is not “liberal artsy” at all. If you come in with English AP credit, you’ll have to take one additional semester of English comp and that will be it for humanities classes. (You can also place out of the one required US History class if you got a 4 or 5 on APUSH.) There are multiple tracks and emphases that you can pursue within the major, including research and pre-health. Undergraduate Degree in Neuroscience | Georgia Tech GT does not have a formal education major or minor, but it does offer advising and a variety of opportunities for students interested in careers in education. http://www.preteaching.gatech.edu/ You might really like an environment like GT, where students are passionate about their fields of study but mostly not in a broad, “liberal arts” kind of way. It’s a reach because of the competitiveness of OOS admissions, but your stats are in range and being female improves your odds.
Leaving aside the distance-from home issue, it would be interesting for you to do a direct comparison between Emory and GT and take a clear-eyed look at which environment you can better see yourself in. Both are highly prestigious, just in different ways. Since the geographic/weather/urban-ness factors are the same… where would you go, between these two, if it were up to you? Compare the neuroscience programs, the distribution requirements, campus life, and so on. Even if neither is your top choice, thinking through the comparison could help bring what you’re looking for into better focus.
(If you decide to apply to GT, apply Early Action.)
Yes, this is an important but commonly forgotten point – while high school writing instruction and practice is closely tied to analysis of fictional literature, many college writing courses and requirements allow for (and often encourage) writing instruction and practice in varied subject matter options.
There are probably many students who are not that good at, or do not particularly like, analyzing fictional literature, but would do well in, and not object to, writing about other subjects.
The OP didn’t ask about colleges where there weren’t extensive requirements for text analysis, but about colleges at which there were fewer requirements for writing. LACs require a LOT of writing.
My D at Middlebury has very similar requirements as you showed for Pomona - the freshman seminar and a writing intensive course. However, all of her courses tend to be writing intensive - a large number of essays, tests which rely on long answers (2-3 paragraphs to a page), rather than short answers, while fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice answers are uncommon. These required neuroscience courses, like intro neuroscience, psychology, etc.
Much of this writing is based on the methods that are learned and developed in the writing intensive courses.
Most of my daughter’s friend group are attending LACs in different locations and of different levels of popularity, and have had similar experiences. One is a student at Pomona.
This is part of the liberal arts tradition. It is also possible because classes are small, professors have low teaching loads, low publication and research funding requirements, and no graduate students. So they have the time and energy to go through long essays and exams with page-long responses.
Does the subject matter make a difference? Would math or science classes at a LAC have less writing? Or would a Chem class, for example, also entail heavy written responses at a LAC, as compared to a larger uni?
I don’t think one can broadly charaterize one type of colleges having more writing requirements than another. It really depends on a particular college’s general education requirements. A college that focuses on STEM may have even more requirements on writing (even intensive writing) than another supposedly liberal-arts focused institution.
Math and science do require writing (regardless of type of college). However, the way one writes a proof of a math theorem or the results of a scientific experiment is somewhat different from how one writes an analysis of fictional literature.
Writing has become a core skill in just about every professional job. You need to have this skill.
I’m having trouble figuring out why you don’t want to take writing courses. Fact is…you will be writing across all disciplines both in college and likely in your professional career.
All very good points.
Like the OP, my goal in college (many years ago) was to take as little English as possible because I hated writing. I was a Chemical Engineering major and when choosing schools I looked for a curriculum that had very few English requirements. I went to Bucknell, which while a university is sometimes classified as an LAC. I only had to take one semester of Creative Writing freshman year that satisfied the English/writing requirement for my major. As an engineering major, I didn’t have much room for many free electives, so beyond that one class, I wrote hardly any humanities type papers.
As @ucbalumnus mentioned, what I, and I think the OP, wanted was not to be stuck writing term papers about the symbolism in Moby Dick. I had to write plenty of lab reports and reports on projects in school and obviously have had to do this throughout my career. I didn’t even really consider that writing when I was a student, even though it obviously is, because to STEM kids lab reports make sense. You’re just explaining what happened. Having to write five pages analyzing literature is totally different and way too abstract for some STEM oriented people.
So my advice to the OP would be to look at what the English/writing requirements are for your potential majors at various schools and use that as one of your criteria for choosing a school. You’ll probably still find plenty of very good schools that have only minimal English requirements.
I took What is a Fairy Tale? as my only English class in college. Yes, there is a huge difference between research papers and analyzing literature. Everyone needs to be able to write.
There is quite a bit of snow in St Louis. And it is messy, slushy snow. Or spitting rain. Or just cold rain. It probably has more miserable weather than U of Utah or U of Denver.
My D was the same way, despite being very strong in English.
Because of AP credits, her only English requirement was an oral communication class. Her advisor steered her to one specific for engineering project presentations. She does plenty of technical writing in her classes.
She specifically wanted a school that would take her AP credits so she would have more room for what she really wanted to take. She was able to fulfill her remaining gen eds with courses for a certification in collaborative leadership.
My daughter HATES writing (and we wish she’d take the DE class in high school to get credit) but she’s actually pretty good at it. She keeps it simple, uses words she knows, has beautiful handwriting so got a 10 or so on the SAT writing when the top score was 12. She also knows when to use to, two, or too and their, there, or they’re. Believe it or not, sometimes that’s all it takes to impress other engineers. They actually asked her to be a TA in the writing center at her college! Oh, she was so sorry to have to turn that job down (she would have hated it).
Her school just required the two English classes with writing because that’s what the ABET required. My other daughter also had 2 English classes required but she was in Arts and Sciences (history major) and I think those were core requirements for A&S. Those could be met with AP/DE credits. She took many more English classes than that and many of her other classes required papers and long written exams so just because the class isn’t English doesn’t mean you won’t be writing.
My son was being interviewed for admission at a tech school. The I tqerviewer asked, “since you have been a winner in national writing completions , why a tech school?” The answer, someone has to write grants.
Still, lit course was history of sci fi and one other related to publishing in his field. Not so bad
Just as a FYI since pre-med/med school was mentioned.
Medical schools almost universally require 2 semesters of writing or “writing intensive” classes that are taken during undergrad as part of their admission requirements. AP credit cannot be used to fulfill this requirement.
Writing intensive doesn’t necessarily mean a English Lit class (though there are a number of medical schools that specify an applicant must have 2 semester of writing classes taken through the English Dept.).
I just want to put an update after talking to a UWash St. Louis freshman… Again, I think there a lot of fits there for your needs, though there may be some writing.
He’s in a neuroscience program and is a math major as well, however he did say they did have a good number of intensive writing reqs, just as a heads up. I think you can likely avoid classes diving deep into English literature (I think he’s probably doing French and math related classes to fulfill his credits), but just thought I’d clarify since I recommended there.
NOT SAYING UWash is something to go out of your way for, but just to considerate it amongst all your options.
I have reviewed papers and grant proposals in STEM (Ecology), and my wife has done so in engineering and data science. There is a HUGE difference in the quality of the papers and grant proposals of those who know how to write and those who do not. Those which were written well were far more likely to be accepted or funded.
This is not only true for academia. Government bids, job proposals, selling your idea to corporate headquarters, writing a report which your manager doesn’t have to slog through, all require knowing how to write.
You are not reading and analyzing English Novels outside of your English courses. What you are doing is reading and analyzing the important literature in the field which is the focus of the course. You are learning how to read text and figure out what the person is trying to say, and thus are learning how to express yourself better. You are also learning to identify issues like logical fallacies and how to avoid using them, or other bad practices in writing. My daughter analyzed environmental literature, statistical research, Psychology literature, and neuroscience literature. She also wrote essays in all of her classes, in which she was supposed to use best writing practices.
This is extremely important in almost all STEM fields*. As I indicated above, in a grant proposal or a bid for a contract, you make a statement, you bring supporting evidence, you use logical arguments based on this evidence, and you present conclusion. This is what you are learning in writing classes.
Logical fallacies are logical fallacies, whether you are writing an essay, a research paper, a grant proposal, or an industry report. Much of the bad “science” that is being produced is the result of logical fallacies on the part of the researchers.