Brown University (other than for ABET-accredited engineering majors)?
Here is what I found about MIT
- HASS requirement: a minimum of eight subjects in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, including three to four in a concentration of your choice
If you take social science into consideration, then the core @Chicago is actually 15 classes with 9 in Hum, Civ, Sosc and Art. Again these classes are sequential. For example, I can’t take three random introductory courses in Social sciences. There is a approved sequence. It is not just the number, but this narrowly defined sequence that does not permit students to cherry pick for example, 3 disjointed survey classes in different humanities, civilizational and arts areas that makes the sequence different from MIT. Also the “including three or four in your concentration of choice” makes it different from a core as defined in Chicago. So, if I understand the MIT requirement correctly, a linguistics major can for example use her major classes to fulfill half of the core requirement. She cannot do that at Chicago. Her core requirements are distinct from her major requirements. I couldn’t find any information on Caltech, so if you can provide that it would be helpful.
Not only are your choices limited in the Core, you may not even get your first choice. For Hum, my DS got his 6 of 8 choice. I am sure there are many at MIT and Caltech that would be complaining if the had to spend their first year studying Poetry and the Human. He did get his first choice for Sosc.
Does the University of Chicago not have the resources to open more sections of high-demand courses?
MIT’s 8 hum/ss courses are semester long each, so they’re equivalent to 12 quarter-length courses (same as Caltech’s requirement, which is 12 courses), more than UChicago’s 9 courses in that area. These schools’ math and science courses required are, of course, significantly in excess of UChicago’s 6 (e.g. Caltech requires 5 math courses, 5 physics courses, 2 chem courses, 1 bio course, and 1 general science course not in student’s area of interest).
I posted Caltech’s requirements upthread. But here it is again:
- 4 courses in humanities (2 intro + 2 advanced)
- 4 courses in social sciences (2 intro + 2 advanced)
- Additional 4 courses in either humanities or social sciences (with at least 1 additional writing-intensive course so desinated among them)
Keep in mind a full-length course at Caltech is 9 Caltech units:
https://www.catalog.caltech.edu/documents/16269/caltech_catalog-2021-section_3.pdf
For what is worth, both MIT and Caltech also require separate writing and oral presentation courses.
This is actually not quite correct. As one example, HASS is very different from the Hum/Sosc/Civ/Arts portion of the Core. First of all, they are spread over four years. Second, they are numerous so that you aren’t restricted in your choices, can choose a concentration that allows you to stay in your science and math wheelhouse, etc. Third, they don’t necessarily require heavy reading and writing (although they certainly can if the student wishes it). You can take courses in formalized methods (such as Econ) or formal logic, both of which would require p-sets not readings. Those are all great courses, but as they are not necessarily going to help the student leave the comfort zone. HASS courses can be in sequence, or stand-alone; a concentration may be “methods-heavy” or may not. Finally, they can double with your breadth and even your minor (not sure about major). None of this resembles what UChicago offers with the Core. There, the STEM kid will spend all of that non-STEM time in significant amounts of close reading and writing. No doubling up on “breadth” or using a gen ed for a minor or working on P-sets or defaulting to the comfortable. Instead, all students will work on common goals: 1) development of humanistic methods of argument; 2) understanding the development and evolution of social thought and its impact on society; 3)learning methods of historical research and interpretation, and 4) understanding arts research and scholarship. There are no exceptions to these goals; they apply equally to everyone. And they are all completed in two years, not four. A UChicago student (whether humanities, social sciences or STEM) will spend practically all of first year on the Core, and usually 1/2-3/4 of second year. Very little in the way of free choice.
UChicago is famous for admitting lots of students who think they don’t belong there. This is actually part of its identity. It’s pretty typical not to appreciate your education there till you have left and start interacting with your friends who graduated from other places. Unfortunately, in your first and second years, those friends were having loads of fun on their campuses, while you were stuck with 200+ pages of reading, 2 p-sets, and a 1,000-page paper all due the next day.
I don’t know where you got those ideas. Some of the courses in their requirements have to be desinated as writing intensive. I don’t understand your point about the difference if you choose to spread those courses over 2 or 4 years.
BTW, reading isn’t a chore for some people. My S can read a full page in a split second (I don’t know how he does it) and then tells me what it said.
This isn’t unique to UChicago. For example, required core courses can’t be used to satify requirements for major electives or minors at the other schools we’re comparing.
Another difference with UChicago: students at these two schools typically take 5 full courses per term (some take 6).
That is incorrect. According to Uchicago’s Registrar. “The Unit is the measure of credit at The University of Chicago. One full Unit (100) is equivalent to 3 1/3 semester hours or 5 quarter hours.”
https://registrar.uchicago.edu/records/transcripts/transcript-key/
So, if each MIT class is 3 semester hours, that is 24 semester credits. UChicago’s 9 classes would be 30 semester credits. Additionally, a full load (4 classes per quarter) would be equal to 40 semester credits.
Different college measures these things differently. There’s no standard. Hours are just estimates by each school. If you don’t think MIT’s semester is equivalent to 1.5 UChicago quarters, then use the Caltech example (Caltech is on the same quarter system and its H/SS requirements are 12 full courses).
Only two courses need fulfill the communication requirement (one in the major). The fact that you don’t understand the difference between two and four years means you are not familiar with the tradition of general ed in this country. It’s not surprising because universities in general abandoned their general ed programs in the 60’s, as @marlowe1 alluded to above, replacing them with gen-ed-lite. It’s possible MIT and Cal Tech, as tech institutes, may never have had had a comprehensive program of general education, and only introduced it in recent decades. You would know that history better than I.
True.
No doubt, as plenty of STEM kids are at UChicago enjoying their Hum/Sosc/Civ and Arts Core. There is a difference, however, between “reading” and “close reading.” My guess is that you believe your son to be an excellent analytical reader, and as a parent of similar children, I’d be thrilled to take your word for it.
Sure that makes sense. UChicago students in years one and two will take 12 courses each year. They can take as few as nine in any one year, but you start to run into trouble if you don’t bump it up. Both my kids took 24 courses by the time they completed 2nd year. I think that works out to be the same as the MIT/Cal Tech students? What happens third and fourth year may vary but the requirement is that you have a minimum of 4200 credits (equivalent to 42 courses), 3800 of which must be “on campus” (38 courses). You are allowed to bring in 400 credits (4 courses). My son hit that max as he had five AP’s but can only bring in 4 of them (electives all). He’ll end up having to do 42 courses by the end of the day, I’m pretty sure. My D brought in 1 course (100 credits) and will graduate with 43 courses on campus. She actually was able to graduate a quarter early but opted not to.
oh yeah lol - they totally are open curriculum, right?
It looks like most MIT subjects (what MIT calls courses) are 12 MIT units, which is equivalent to 4 semester hour credits, according to Subject levels & credit | MIT Registrar .
Communication requirement is separate from, and in addition to, the H/SS requirement. I still don’t get your point on whether taking those H/SS courses over 2 or 4 years makes a difference.
No. 12 courses per year means 4 courses per quarter. At Caltech (I’m using Caltech as example from now on to avoid the claim that an MIT semester-length course isn’t equivalent to 1.5 quarter-length courses), students typically takes 5 courses (some take 6).
Here is a 1946 university catalog:
Page 64 lists the general education requirements for the largest division (College of Letters and Science).
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Not sure whether @Eeyore123 is referring to this or another year. This year (class of '24) was tough because everyone front-loaded their top choices with in-person rather than remote modalities (UChicago first years were invited to campus and a good number showed up and lived in the res halls, but many courses were still offered remotely). However, not getting your first choice Hum is so frequent it should be included in the “ethos.” My kids were told that the point of these courses (Hum and Sosc) is to teach critical reasoning and analytical writing so it really doesn’t matter which course you end up in - they’re all good! But just imagine that happening elsewhere LOL. A STEM kid signing up for Social Science Inquiry who ends up in Classics of Social and Political Thought. So long, Becker; hello, Plato, More, Marx and Tocqueville for three quarters. Some this has happened to believe it works out for the best, an eye-opening experience that they wouldn’t have chosen for themselves, etc. Others - not so much.
They do. Everyone ends up in Hum. Some sections are wildly popular due to topic/time slot. Obviously can’t accommodate everyone. These aren’t large lecture courses. They are 18-19 person seminars.
The way I measure is just to take the percentage of the student’s degree requirement is taken up with non-STEM. Assuming MIT students take five courses per semester, that’s about 20%. That’s equivalent to UChicago’s non-STEM requirement which is 9/42 = 21%. UChicago also has F/L of course which is up to an additional 7% (3/42). Obviously MIT’s Math and Science are in excess of UChicago’s. It’s not a liberal ed school and the general ed curriculum is heavily based on STEM requirements. It’s as intense there as Hum/Sosc is at UChicago!
No, that isn’t the right way to look at it. The right way to look at it is that a typical MIT student takes at least one more course (most llkely in STEM) than a UChicago student.
That’s a long paper… about as long as Song and Fire and Ice books, although George R.R. Martin sometimes takes 10+ years to write his books, rather than a single day.
“Communication” in the major at UChicago is integrated already, so much so that it’s not necessary to check a box here. The students are used to this.
Sorry - corrected my original post. I meant 12 per year not quarter at UChicago!
“Communication” here means technical writings and oral technical seminar presentations. They want all their students to be trained for these important and distinct skills.