Typical Freshman Courseload

Colleges and Universities A-Z Haverford College
1

<p>With all of the distribution requirements for Haverford, how are these typically met? Plus there's a language requirement which you would probably want to get out of the way. So let's say you were going pre-med, would it be something like:</p>

<p>First semester
Freshman seminar
Language
Chem
Bio or Math</p>

<p>Second semester
Language
Chem
Bio or Math
Liberal Arts class?</p>

2

<p>The requirements sound way worse than they are, trust me, and there’s lots of ways to fulfill them. I’ve never heard of there being an issue with graduation/required major courses/etc because of distribution requirements. Haverford definitely is a liberal arts school though, so they want students to try new things and be well rounded. Most of the time, people are complaining because they want to take more different subjects, not less.</p>

<p>We don’t have a pre-med specific major, so most likely you’d be doing bio or chem. Haverford requires you to take a semester of natural lab science (chem usually) before starting bio (you start at the 200 level). To fulfill the social sciences requirements, a lot of people take psych classes that cross over into bio (neuro or cognitive). As for the humanities, just take something that sounds interesting. We have amazing profs and they’re very easily accessible and happy to help, so don’t worry if you don’t think English is your thing. A ton of courses (like the psych ones) are also cross-listed.</p>

<p>Language requirements can be filled a lot of the time by going abroad and the study abroad website has specific programs highlighted for science majors. Otherwise, I would say keep taking the language you took in high school if you liked it. If not, Bryn Mawr has amazing programs in really cool languages like Russian and Arabic if you want something totally new.</p>

<p>Also, here’s a guide haverford published on med school which might be helpful: <a href=“http://www.haverford.edu/prehealth/files/first-and-second-year-guide.pdf”>http://www.haverford.edu/prehealth/files/first-and-second-year-guide.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

3

<p>That’s pretty close @RPianoDad‌ and @collegiate22 is spot on. Haverford does an excellent job of encouraging students to explore a wide variety of topics during their freshman year and does this without compromising the quest for pre-med. The one constant in year one for most considering pre-med is chemistry. </p>